Kadizadeli

The Kadızadeli movement (Turkish: Kadızadeliler) was a seventeenth-century fundamentalist religious movement in the Ottoman Empire that followed Kadızade Mehmed (1582-1635), a revivalist Islamic preacher. Kadızade and his followers were determined rivals of Sufism and folk religion. They condemned many of the Ottoman practices that Kadızade felt were bid'ah or innovations, and passionately supported "reviving the beliefs and practices of the first Muslim generation in the 1st century AH" and "enjoining good and forbidding wrong".

Driven by zealous rhetoric, Kadızade Mehmed was able to inspire many followers to join in his cause and rid themselves of any and all corruption found inside the Ottoman Empire. Leaders of the movement held official positions as preachers in the major mosques of Baghdad and Istanbul, and "combined popular followings with support from within the Ottoman state apparatus". Between 1630 and 1680 there were many violent quarrels that occurred between the Kadızadelis and those whom they disapproved of. As the movement progressed, activists became "increasingly violent" and Kadızadelis were known to enter "mosques, tekkes and Ottoman coffeehouses in order to mete out punishments to those contravening their version of orthodoxy."