Kadızadelis were a seventeenth-century puritanical reformist religious movement in the Ottoman Empire who followed Kadızade Mehmed (1582-1635), a revivalist Islamic preacher. Kadızade and his followers were determined rivals of Sufism and popular religion. They condemned many of the Ottoman practices that Kadızade felt were bidʻah "non-Islamic innovations", and passionately supported "reviving the beliefs and practices of the first Muslim generation in the first/seventh century" ("enjoining good and forbidding wrong").^[16]

Driven by zealous and fiery rhetoric, Kadızade Mehmed was able to inspire many followers to join in his cause and rid themselves of any and all corruption found inside of the Ottoman Empire. Leaders of the movement held official positions as preachers in the major mosques of Baghdad, and "combined popular followings with support from within the Ottoman state apparatus".^[17] Between 1630 and 1680 there were many violent quarrels that occurred between the Kadızadelis and those that 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."^[18]

The Kadizadelis failed in implementing their endeavors; nevertheless their campaign emphasized the divisions within the religious establishment in Ottoman society. The Kadizadeli legacy from one generation to another has been deeply enmeshed in the leaders who were inspired by scholar Birgivi that gave growth to the Kadizade movement. The Kadizade's religious advancement in the Ottoman periphery strengthened the anti-elitist movement. In the end, the faith's chief ulema's continued to support Sufi theology. Many academics and scholars have argued that the Kadizadelis were self-serving and hypocritical; since most of their criticisms were based around the fact that they were on the fringes of society and felt alienated from the rest of the social order. Scholars felt due to being separated from opportunities and power positions inside of the Ottoman Empire, the Kadizadelis took the position they did and were thus cast as reformers instead instigators.