English Text
Muṣliḥ al-Dīn al-Qasṭallānī (d. 901/1496), a student of Khiḍr Beg (d. 863/1458), is regarded as one of the first representatives of a new type of Ottoman philosophical theology. The *Handbook of Islamic Theology* (2016) edited by Salwa El-Awa places him among a group of scholars who, while continuing in the tradition of their encyclopaedically trained predecessors, sought to establish new directions in Ottoman scholarly thought.
**Intellectual context:** Hızır Bey's three students — Dervīsh Hayālī (d. 875/1470), Khūjazāda (d. 893/1488), and Kestelī (d. 901/1496) — are considered the first wave of Ottoman philosophical theology. During this era, Ottoman scholars enjoyed the privilege of freely criticizing both earlier Muslim thinkers and their contemporaries.
**Theological critique — *Risāla fī Ishkālāt Sharḥ al-Mawāqif*:** In this treatise (Ms. Süleymaniye, Laleli, no. 3030), Kestelī critically discussed al-Jurjānī's views in his commentary on the *Mawāqif*. According to El-Awa, Kestelī's criticisms focused on two central issues: the possibility of necessary knowledge and the relations between essence (*dhāt*) and attributes (*ṣifāt*) — both topics at the intersection of epistemology and theology in the late Ḥanafite-Māturīdite and Ashʿarite traditions.
**Scholarly debate:** Kestelī's positions were in turn debated and rejected by Hızır Bey's son Sinān Pasha (d. 891/1486) in a separate treatise (Ms. Köprülü, Asım Bey, no. 721), illustrating the dynamic scholarly culture of fifteenth-century Istanbul.