The paradoxes of Hagia Sophia's ablution fountain: the Qasida al-Burda in cosmopolitan Istanbul, 1740

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474461009.003.0003

The ablution fountain (şardırvan) placed in the Atrium of Hagia Sophia in 1740 has suffered from scholarly neglect. The fountain was actually the first component of an extensive building project Mahmud I undertook at Hagia Sophia, and the inscriptions decorating its exterior and interior surfaces acquire greater significance in that light. One of them, indeed, is a famous qasida (ode) of praise for the Prophet Muhammad —the Poem of the Mantle, better known as the Burda. Written in Arabic in Mamluk Egypt by the poet, scholar, and Sufi mystic Imam Sharafaddin al-Būsīrī (d. 1294), it found great favor in Sufi circles, but was suspect in the eyes of the orthodox ulema on the grounds that it eroded Allah's uniqueness by shrouding Muhammad in a quasi-divine cloud. Such controversies escalated and engulfed the Ottoman court, too, from the late seventeenth into the early eighteenth century. Nevertheless, Mahmud I as the reigning sultan ordered the reproduction of the poem's first 16 couplets on the entablature of the ablution fountain. This choice opens a new window for us in re-evaluating the growing centrality of the Prophetic tradition at this time.