Nafs discipline in Kınalızâde's Ahlâk-ı Alâî

This study examines the moral diseases of the nafs and the methods of their treatment in Ahlâk-ı Alâî, an ethical treatise written by the Ottoman scholar, thinker, and judge Kınalızâde Ali Çelebi (d. 980/1572), within the framework of Sufi nafs discipline. Composed during the "Methodological Synthesis Phase" of 10th/16th-century Islamic thought, the work represents one of the last examples of the classical tradition of philosophical ethics. Reflecting the eclectic intellectual milieu of his period, Kınalızâde approaches the knowledge available to him through philosophical, Sufi, and religious perspectives, subjecting it to analysis and critique and thereby producing an original synthesis. The study argues that the ethical system presented in the work is closely related to the Sufi understanding of the discipline and refinement of the nafs. Kınalızâde interprets the powers of the soulexamined from the lowest to the highest level-in connection with the Qurʾānic stages of the nafs (nafs al-ammāra, nafs al-lawwāma, nafs al-muṭmaʾinna), and establishes a link between the philosophers' tripartite classification of the soul and the Sufi hierarchy of spiritual states. Building on this relationship, the appetitive, irascible, and rational faculties are analyzed in relation to these stages, revealing meaningful correspondences between the moral disorders associated with each faculty and the maladies observed at the respective levels of the nafs. In doing so, the study clarifies how nafs discipline is conceptualized in the work and demonstrates both the impact of the Sufi tradition on Kınalızâde's philosophical framework and his original contribution to that tradition through his distinctive understanding of moral psychology and spiritual refinement.