Sheikh ul-Islam issues fatwas on holy war

On 11 November 1914 the Sheikh ul-Islam, the highest religious dignitary of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Hayri Efendi of Ürgüp, issued five fatwas, legal opinions based on Islamic law. They declared the war with Russia, Britain and France a jihad, a holy war in which participation was the duty of all the Muslims of the world. The same day Sultan Mehmed V, as caliph, proclaimed a call to holy war. The fatwas were read out publicly only three days later, however, on 14 November, in front of the Fatih Mosque, the Mosque of the Conqueror, in Constantinople. For this reason both 11 and 14 November are given in the literature as the date of the proclamation of jihad.

Five questions and five answers

The fatwas took the traditional form of questions to which the Sheikh ul-Islam replied briefly, “yes” or “no”. The first stated that if enemies united against Islam and the padishah, in accordance with the words of the Koran, proclaimed a holy war, participation in it was the duty of all Muslims. The second extended this duty explicitly to Muslims living under the rule of Russia, Britain and France, states which according to the fatwa had attacked the caliphate. The third declared that those who evaded the call would incur the wrath of God. The last two forbade Muslims from the Entente states to fight against Ottoman troops and also against their allies, Germany and Austria-Hungary. This, it was written, would be a grave sin, harmful to the caliphate and to Islam.

It was thus an unusual jihad, directed not against “infidels” in general but only against Turkey’s specific adversaries. Christian Germany and Austria-Hungary were explicitly excluded from it. A body of scholars deliberated on the content of the fatwas for about two weeks, and besides the Sheikh ul-Islam the document was signed by 29 clerics and jurists. Mustafa Hayri himself explained to a correspondent of the Berlin Berliner Tageblatt that the holy war was not directed against Christians as such, but only against the states that had attacked the caliphate.

The author of the fatwas

Mustafa Hayri Efendi, born in 1867 in Ürgüp in Cappadocia, came from a family of scholars and for years held judicial offices. He became Sheikh ul-Islam in March 1914, in the government of the Grand Vizier Said Halim Pasha. The fatwas on jihad were the most celebrated act of his career. In May 1916 he resigned, officially because of illness, in reality after disputes with the Young Turks. After the war the British interned him on Malta. He died in his native Ürgüp in 1921.

The British tried to forestall their effects: as early as 2 November they had guaranteed the inviolability of the holy places of Islam. The fatwas reached the press and were distributed in translation throughout the Muslim world, from North Africa to India, but the response they evoked proved much weaker than had been hoped in Constantinople and Berlin.