At this point, my hope is that the reader has come to appreciate the rich and complex historical legacy that Ottoman religious and mystical sources have left for us. They allow us to enrich the state-centric imperial narratives of the universal historians, on the one hand, while allowing us to put a human face on both Ottoman bureaucratic records and inscriptions locked in stone, on the other. Moreover, in-depth tracing of the trajectory of the Şacbâniye and other branches of the Halveti over the course of their history offers researchers a cautionary note regarding facile generalizations about the positions or viewpoints that “the Halveti order” would have on any given issue in their society. Individual shaykhs and their orders were often quite different in their approaches, and frequently revised or reinvented their traditions to reflect changes in their society. So given this kaleidoscopic vision, what important conclusions can now be drawn about the history of the Halveti order as whole?

Our examination of both extant and newly uncovered sources about the Halveti indicates that we can now identify some of the elements involved in the origin of the Halveti tradition with more clarity. This should not distract us from the basic problem that the historical record suffers from gaps that require further exploration, along with distortions that reflect the concerns of subsequent generations of Muslims who made that record.