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Abstract
This dissertation presents a comprehensive intellectual biography of Mollā Fenārī (d. 834/1431), one of the most influential scholars of late medieval Anatolia, and an in-depth examination of his distinctive Sufi metaphysics, particularly his conceptualization of God (al-ḥaqq, “the Real”) as absolute being (al-wujūd al-muṭlaq). Drawing extensively on primary sources—including numerous unpublished and previously overlooked manuscripts—the study reconstructs Fenārī’s life and religious thought within the transformative religious and political landscape of the eighth/fourteenth- and ninth/fifteenth-century Anatolia and its broader transregional context. After the introduction, which situates the dissertation within various academic disciplines and avenues of research, chapters 1 and 2 offer a comprehensive biography of Mollā Fenārī, divided into subsections on key periods and pivotal events in his life. Chapter 1 focuses on his early life, family, and intellectual formation in Anatolia, Jerusalem, and Egypt, and concludes with his career in the burgeoning Ottoman religious and legal bureaucracy, as well as his interactions within transregional intellectual networks spanning Anatolia, Egypt, the Levant, and Central Asia. Chapter 2 begins with Fenārī’s departure from Bursa and relocation to Karaman, a watershed moment in his life that highlights his independence from any single polity and his ability to continue his scholarly activities in diverse settings and under alternative patronages across Anatolia. The chapter also addresses Fenārī’s well-documented pilgrimage and sojourn in Mamluk Cairo, highlighting the tensions among scholars regarding adherence to or condemnation of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s legacy. Chapter 3 presents an in-depth historical, contextual, and structural analysis of Fenārī’s summa of Sufi metaphysics, Miṣbāḥ al-uns. It begins with the reception of this monumental text in Ottoman royal and intellectual contexts and in early modern Persian seminaries, and examines its complex textual architecture, showing how it is intricately constructed upon Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī’s Miftāḥ al-ghayb while significantly expanding its scope and content. The chapter also explores the sources Fenārī integrates into his work and, based on his selective engagement with them, proposes several intertwined arguments about the internal dynamics of the philosophical development of the school of Ibn al-ʿArabī, suggesting that the dominant narrative in the field of Ibn al-ʿArabī studies requires revision. Chapter 4 turns to the scientific and epistemological foundations of Sufi metaphysics that Fenārī outlines in his prolegomena to Miṣbāḥ al-uns, highlighting Fenārī’s departure from the Avicennan and Avicennan-inspired theory of sciences. It underscores that in Fenārī’s system, the theory of sciences does not function as a meta-metaphysics prescribing how metaphysics should operate, but rather as a post factum framework explaining its operation—albeit with certain exceptions and ad hoc solutions. The chapter also presents a foundational epistemological argument for understanding Fenārī’s Sufi metaphysics: that while certain truths are not accessible to the unaided human intellect, they are nonetheless intelligible. Chapters 5‒7 offer a detailed analysis of the First Station (al-maqām al-awwal) of Part One (al-faṣl al-awwal) in the Comprehensive Foreword (al-tamhīd al-jumlī) to Miṣbāḥ al-uns, where Fenārī presents and defends the Sufi metaphysical conception of God as absolute being (al-wujūd al-muṭlaq). Chapter 5 situates Fenārī’s discourse within broader debates on divine simplicity, composition, and dependency, illustrating his conception of being (wujūd) and his appropriation and critique of post-Avicennan falsafa and kalām. Chapter 6 investigates Fenārī’s engagement with Saʿd al-Dīn Taftāzānī’s critique of the Sufi conception of God as absolute being (al-wujūd al-muṭlaq), focusing on the dense and previously underexplored arguments in Miṣbāḥ al-uns. It identifies the central point of contention between Fenārī and Taftāzānī as the ontological status of being—specifically, whether being can be negated of itself. Chapter 7 examines the concept of absolute being in relation to the theory of universals. Building on the previous chapter’s analysis, it first presents ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Bihishtī’s hitherto unexamined incorporation of the theory of universals into Sufi metaphysics. The chapter then explores how Fenārī addresses the ontological status of universals, particularly as they pertain to the reality of God. Through close readings of key passages from Miṣbāḥ al-uns, it demonstrates how Fenārī critiques Bihishtī’s conception of absolute being as wāḥid bi-l-shakhṣ (individually one), instead advancing an absolutist view that situates being beyond the universal-individual binary.