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"Sufism Turkey History."
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Caliphate redefined : the mystical turn in Ottoman political thought
\"The medieval theory of the caliphate, epitomized by the Abbasids (750-1258), was the construct of jurists who conceived it as a contractual leadership of the Muslim community in succession to the Prophet Muhammed's political authority. In this book, Huseyin Yilmaz traces how a new conception of the caliphate emerged under the Ottomans, who redefined the caliph as at once a ruler, a spiritual guide, and a lawmaker corresponding to the prophet's three natures.Challenging conventional narratives that portray the Ottoman caliphate as a fading relic of medieval Islamic law, Yilmaz offers a novel interpretation of authority, sovereignty, and imperial ideology by examining how Ottoman political discourse led to the mystification of Muslim political ideals and redefined the caliphate. He illuminates how Ottoman Sufis reimagined the caliphate as a manifestation and extension of cosmic divine governance. The Ottoman Empire arose in Western Anatolia and the Balkans, where charismatic Sufi leaders were perceived to be God's deputies on earth. Yilmaz traces how Ottoman rulers, in alliance with an increasingly powerful Sufi establishment, continuously refashioned and legitimated their rule through mystical imageries of authority, and how the caliphate itself reemerged as a moral paradigm that shaped early modern Muslim empires.A masterful work of scholarship, Caliphate Redefined is the first comprehensive study of premodern Ottoman political thought to offer an extensive analysis of a wealth of previously unstudied texts in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish.\"--Jacket flap.
Book
The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought in the Ottoman Empire
Based on careful study of the substantial and largely unpublished manuscript legacy left by the Halvetî mystical order, one of the most influential Sufi orders in the Ottoman Empire, this is a history of the rise and spread of its Sa'baniyye branch between the 15th and 17th centuries.
eBook
Islam, literature and society in Mongol Anatolia
From a Christian, Greek- and Armenian-speaking land to a predominantly Muslim and Turkish speaking one, the Islamisation of medieval Anatolia would lay the groundwork for the emergence of the Ottoman Empire as a world power and ultimately the modern Republic of Turkey. Bringing together previously unpublished sources in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, Peacock offers a new understanding of the crucial but neglected period in Anatolian history, that of Mongol domination, between c. 1240 and 1380. This represents a decisive phase in the process of Islamisation, with the popularisation of Sufism and the development of new forms of literature to spread Islam. This book integrates the study of Anatolia with that of the broader Islamic world, shedding new light on this crucial turning point in the history of the Middle East.
Book
Alevis and Alawites: A Comparative Study of History, Theology, and Politics
The Alevis of Anatolia and the Balkans and the Alawites of Syria and southeastern Turkey are two distinct ethnoreligious communities frequently conflated in both media and scholarly literature, despite their divergent historical origins, theological differences, and varying sociocultural formations. While their shared histories of marginalization and persecution, certain theological parallels, and cognate ethnonyms contribute to this conflation, it largely stems from a broader tendency within mainstream Islamic frameworks to homogenize so-called heterodox communities without sufficient attention to their doctrinal and cultural specificities. This paper, grounded in a synthetic analysis of current scholarship, maps the key historical, theological, and sociocultural intersections and divergences between Alawite and Alevi communities. Situated within the broader framework of intra-Islamic diversity, it seeks to move beyond essentialist and homogenizing paradigms by foregrounding the distinct genealogies of each tradition, rooted, respectively, in the early pro-Alid movements of Iraq and Syria and in Anatolian Sufism. In addition, the study examines the communities’ overlapping political trajectories in the modern era, particularly their alignments with leftist and secular–nationalist currents, as well as their evolving relationship—from mutual unawareness to a recent political rapprochement—prompted by the growing existential threats posed by the rise of Sunni-Salafi Islamist movements.
Journal Article
Timekeepers and Sufi Mystics: Technical Knowledge Bearers of the Ottoman Empire
This article shows how the Ottoman understanding of \"useful sciences\" was reserved for the religious sciences, offering an alternative reading to the present scholarship on Useful and Reliable Knowledge (URK), which emphasizes economic gain. As religious obligations, like the call for prayer, required precise timekeeping, pursuing astronomical knowledge was deemed \"useful.\" Timekeepers and Sufi mystics (dervishes) represent a link between artisanal and scientific knowledge in Ottoman Turkey between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century. Combining their scholarly knowledge and artisanal skills, they produced traditional time-measuring instruments like quadrants and sundials. With the advent of the mechanical clock in the Ottoman Empire, dervishes became engaged in clock-making. Timekeepers kept producing quadrants, while they also acquired skills in repairing and setting mechanical clocks. This understanding prevailing among madrasa (religious) scholars changed drastically in the nineteenth century when scholars trained in modern schools translated European scientific and technical texts that were defined as holders of useful knowledge.
Journal Article
Geographies of Revival and Erasure: Neo-Ottoman Sites of Memory in Istanbul, Thessaloniki, and Budapest
In this article, I draw on Pierre Nora's concept of \"sites of memory\" to explore the material textures and political effects of neo-Ottomanism in three locations: Miniatürk, a theme park in Istanbul that features scale replicas of many prominent Ottoman structures; Thessaloniki's New Mosque, a former place of worship for the syncretic religious community of the dönme; and the Tomb of Gül Baba, a 16th-century Sufi dervish and saint, in Budapest. My exposition moves in two directions. On the one hand, I emphasize how sites of memory frequently serve to bolster dominant, politicized discourses of neo-Ottomanism. On the other hand, I trace how sites of renascent Ottoman memory - especially those outside of Turkey - undermine and contradict the premises of neo-Ottomanism in unanticipated ways. Over the course of my article, I develop the concept of \"disciplined historicity\" as a method for approaching sites of memory that integrates both historical knowledge and appreciation for the material and aesthetic qualities of the spaces in question.
Journal Article
INTO THE DARK: POWER, LIGHT, AND NOCTURNAL LIFE IN 18TH-CENTURY ISTANBUL
This article analyzes different traditions of nocturnal conviviality in 18th-century Istanbul and demonstrates their importance for social, political, and cultural life. The main argument is that the palace used the night to demonstrate its power in spectacles of light and to cultivate personal relations within the elite, both of which were crucial for a patrimonial government based on face-to-face interaction. Yet, it was exactly the reliance on such interaction that marked the limits of the palace's hold of the night. With the neighborhood gaze blinded by darkness, communal policing lost much of its effectiveness, leaving nocturnal social life largely concealed from the eyes of the authorities. Nighttime therefore offered opportunities for illicit modes of socialization and, at times, for subversive political action.
Journal Article
‘Fugitive Mullahs and Outlawed Fanatics’: Indian Muslims in nineteenth century trans-Asiatic Imperial Rivalries
This paper follows the careers of ‘outlawed’ Indian Muslim subjects who moved outside the geographical and political space of British India and located themselves at the intersection of nineteenth century trans-Asiatic politics: Hijaz, Istanbul and the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and Burma and Acheh in the East. These areas were sites where ‘modern’ Empires (British, Dutch, Ottoman and Russian) coalesced to lay out a trans-Asiatic imperial assemblage. The paper shows how Muslim ‘outlaws’ made careers and carved out their transnational networks by moving across the imperial assemblages of the nineteenth century. British colonial rule, being an important spoke in the imperial wheel, enabled much of this transnationalism to weld together. Webs of connections derived from older forms of Islamic connectivity as well: diplomacy, kinship ties, the writing of commentaries on Islam and its sacred texts in unique ways, oral traditions, madrasa and student contacts. These networks were inclusive and impacted by the tanzimat-inspired scriptural reformist thought in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. They were not narrowly anti-colonial in tone as they derived from a complex inter-play of imperial rivalries in the region. Rather, they were geared towards the triumph of reformist Islam that would unite the umma (community) and engage with the European world order. The paper shows how this imperially-embedded and individual-driven Muslim transnational network linked with Muslim politics rooted within India.
Journal Article
Connecting People: A Central Asian Sufi network in turn-of-the-century Istanbul
The role of Sufi networks in facilitating trans-imperial travel and the concomitant social and political connections associated with the pilgrimage to Mecca is often mentioned in the literature on Ottoman-Central Asian relations, yet very little is known about how these networks operated or the people who patronized them. This paper focuses on the Sultantepe Özbekler Tekkesi, a Naqshbandi lodge in Istanbul that was a primary locus of Ottoman state interactions with Central Asians and a major hub of Central Asian diasporic networks. It departs from an exclusive focus on the experiences of elites, to which much of the conventional historiography on Ottoman-Central Asian relations has confined itself, and examines the butchers and bakers, craftsmen and students who set out on the hajj to Mecca in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on sources from the private archive of this lodge, the paper reconstructs the experiences of a diverse range of remarkably mobile actors and explores the myriad ways in which this Ottoman-administered institution facilitated their travel to and from Mecca. Through its focus on the conduits and mediators, the structures and buildings—the actual sites—where connections were forged, the paper sheds light on the role that such state-administered Sufi lodges played in delivering on the paternalistic rhetoric and system of sultanic charity that was an integral part of late Ottoman politics and society.
Journal Article