Other Naqshbandi’s ventured to defend the vocal dhikr against critics. We recall that the seventeenth-century Medinese Sheykh Ibrahim al-Kurani entered into an argument about this issue with a prominent Ottoman visitor known for his opposition to music and vocal dhikr ceremonies (probably the Kadizadeli leader Mehmed Vani Effendi). Kurani also produced two treatise in defense of the vocal method, the Nash al-zahr fi’l -dhikr bi’l-jahr and the Ithaf al-munib al-awwah bi-fadl al-jahr bi-dhikr Allah. In the Ithaf, written in response to the Transoxanian foes of vocal recollection, he marshaled numerous Quranic verses and Prophet traditions to prove that this method was licit. Moreover, Kurani made the point that Shaafis – most of his own disciples- held the vocal dhikr superior. For followers of this legal school, vocal rather than silent dhikr was the “original” method and indeed a “key to the religion” of Islam.

In Damascus the prolific scholar Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi took up the issue of music in his Idah al-dalalat fi sama al-alat – according to a recent study also in response to critics associated with the Kadizadeli movement. In the Idah, Nabulusi pointed out that all singing and musical accompaniment, whether by Sufis or other Muslims, was licit, if only by special dispensation. Music was prohibited only when it positively distracted listeners from the recollection of God or from the observance of religious duties. Finally a student of Kurani by the name of Ibn al-Mimi held that the silent method of recollection undeniably superior and the one that Naqshbandi’s specifically adopted; yet in view of the high emotions that apparently continued to surround controversies about the dhikr, and perhaps because of the insistence or audacity of the opposition, Ibn al-Mimi too found it necessary to challenge the opponents of vocal dhikr. In a treatise devoted to the Naqshbandi Way, he insisted that those who called for eliminating the vocal method were nothing but “ossified”, “ignorant”, “pigheaded”. [37]

[37] Ibn al-Mimi, Nazm al-sumut, 8b

ref: Le Gall, Dina (2005). A Culture of Sufism – Naqshbandis in the Ottoman World – 1450-1700. SUNY Press