Intellectual virtues of an Ottoman ʿālim: Madrasa education and the making of a scholar in late Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Istanbul

This thesis delves into the question of what it meant to be anʿālim in late seventeenth and eighteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul, exploring it as a history of scholarly self. It conceptualises the making of an alim as a process of moulding into a specific scholarly selfhood through the cultivation of various intellectual virtues. The study's methodological focus is on an ʿālim's educational processes. It examines Ottoman discussions on higher education and theoretical discourses on learning primarily through the works of prominent scholars of the period, including Sājaqlīzāda Muhammad al-Marʿashī (d.1732), Dāwūd al-Qārsī (d.1756) and Muhammed al-Mīmī al-Basrī (d.1749). Equally crucial to this study is the content analysis of educational materials, engagement with which is considered as technologies of scholarly self-formation. For this purpose, I utilise the works of tartīb, Ottoman accounts of educational curricula. The study introduces malaka as the Ottoman concept for intellectual virtues, arguing that the key virtue was istiḥḍār, tentatively translated as semantic fluency. Furthermore, it presents muṭāliʿ as a case study of an Ottoman scholarly self and attempts a detailed reconstruction of this unique intellectual selfhood, primarily based on Müneccimbāşī Ahmed Dede's (d.1702) account. While not a central argument, the study proposes an additional historiographical intervention by arguing for the presence of an Ottoman "pedagogical turn" manifested in the rise of müderris-alim figures and the emergence of new pedagogical genres during the period under investigation.