Nefsü’l-Emr literature and its meaning for early modern Ottoman society

Abstract

This thesis is a contextual study of nefsü’l-emrnâmes, a group of humorous texts that inventory and curse a wide variety of infringers of social, moral, and religious norms and hierarchies in the early modern Ottoman Empire. Written between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, the eleven manuscripts analyzed in this thesis, ridicule anonymous groups of people for their ill-manners and impudent behaviors, freezing them in their most humiliating moments. For their derisions, all versions and copies use different literary tactics, such as maledictions or a petition form, and the authors appropriate the style and content of the genre to their different social realities and agendas. Focusing on religious matters and the city as two distinct yet interrelated categories, this thesis aims to contextualize the genre of nefsü’l-emrnâmes within the transformations, movements, and dynamics that shaped Ottoman society from the sixteenth century on. Increasing urban population, changing modes of urban life, and new regimes of visuality are offered as phenomena that challenge the existing hierarchies in the early modern city, forming the backbone of nefsü’l-emr criticisms directed at city-dwellers. Likewise, sixteenth and seventeenth-century trends in religion, e.g. Kadızadeli movement and the popularization of Sufism, play a central role in the nefsü’l-emr approach to religious matters and groups.