Binding with a Perfect Sufi Master: Naqshbandī Defenses of rābiṭa from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-78
Author(s):  
M. Brett Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Turkish Language ◽  
Late Ottoman ◽  
Different Parts

Abstract This article explores debates surrounding the controversial spiritual exercise of rābiṭa – the binding of the disciple with a Sufi master by envisioning the image of the master in different parts of the body. Despite being criticized as a non-Qurʾanic practice and as a form of idolatry, rābiṭa was made a ritual of prominence among the Khālidī-Naqshbandī suborder which took shape in early nineteenth-century Syria and spread throughout the late Ottoman Empire. Tracing defenses of the practice from Arabic sources in the early nineteenth century to Turkish language treatises in the twentieth century, I argue that the Sufi ādāb manual al-Bahja al-saniyya composed by Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Khānī (1798-1862) established a repertoire of arguments that have been adopted and reused in Turkish language treatises until the present with little variation, revealing a remarkable continuity of apologetics over nearly two centuries. Additionally, the article considers the role of this ritual in defining the nature of master-disciple relationships and establishing hierarchies of Sufi devotion and obedience.

scholarly journals From Class Solidarity to Revolution: The Radicalization of Arsenal Workers in the Late Ottoman Empire

2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akın Sefer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman ◽  
The Revolution

AbstractThis article introduces a bottom-up perspective to the history of the Revolution of 1908 in the Ottoman Empire by focusing on the experiences of workers in the Imperial Naval Arsenal (Tersâne-i Âmire) in Istanbul. Drawing mainly on primary documents, the article explores, from a class-formation perspective, the struggles and relations of Arsenal workers from the second half of the nineteenth century until the revolution. The Arsenal workers’ involvement in the revolution was rooted in their class solidarity, which was revealed in a number of ways throughout this period. The workers’ immediate embrace of the revolution was spurred by their radicalization against the state; such radicalization stemmed from the state's failure to solve the workers’ persistent economic problems, and its attempts to discharge them and replace them with military labor. The case of the Arsenal workers thus points to the role of working-class discontent in the history of the revolution, a dimension that has thus far been only minimally addressed in Ottoman historiography.

scholarly journals Beyond ‘Black Turks’ and ‘White Turks’ – The Turkish Elites’ Ongoing Mission to Civilize a Colourful Society

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Ramm
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

AbstractThis article undertakes a conceptual enquiry into the history of the Ottoman/Turkish concept of civilization. It shows how the concept of civilization became one of the key elements of political and intellectual thought in the late Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. Beginning with the adaption of the idea of civilization in the nineteenth century, the desire to be recognized as civilized has moulded the thinking of Ottoman and Turkish elites regardless of their political orientation. From the early Ottoman modernizers to the present-day AKP government the pursuit of

The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taner Akçam
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Armenian Genocide ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Young Turks ◽  
East And West ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Late Ottoman

Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian subjects. This book goes deep inside the bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey to show how a dying empire embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing. Although the deportation and killing of Armenians was internationally condemned in 1915 as a “crime against humanity and civilization,” the Ottoman government initiated a policy of denial that is still maintained by the Turkish Republic. The case for Turkey's “official history” rests on documents from the Ottoman imperial archives, to which access has been heavily restricted until recently. It is this very source that the book now uses to overturn the official narrative. The documents presented here attest to a late-Ottoman policy of Turkification, the goal of which was no less than the radical demographic transformation of Anatolia. To that end, about one-third of Anatolia's 15 million people were displaced, deported, expelled, or massacred, destroying the ethno-religious diversity of an ancient cultural crossroads of East and West, and paving the way for the Turkish Republic. By uncovering the central roles played by demographic engineering and assimilation in the Armenian Genocide, this book will fundamentally change how this crime is understood and show that physical destruction is not the only aspect of the genocidal process.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Darin Stephanov
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Mass Scale ◽  
Comprehensive Approach ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
Promising Area ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

The introduction provides a brief overview of the book’s main questions and goals against the backdrop of recent scholarship on group identities and communal boundaries. This book proposes a more systematic and comprehensive approach to the topic in the context of the late Ottoman Empire, based on terminological innovation and a three-tiered theorization of average personal attachments. By adopting the meta concept of ruler (in)visibility, it connects the ruler to the ruled and suggests that the former had no viable competitor for popular loyalties over most of the nineteenth century. It then identifies the annual all-imperial ruler celebrations, a global mass-scale nineteenth-century phenomenon, as an under-researched and extremely promising area of focus in the study of the moorings of contemporary popular belonging. Finally, the introduction discusses methods and sources, and provides a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the book.

The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1808 to 1908

1993 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selim Deringil
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
World History ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
National Foundation ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

The nineteenth century, a time when world history seemed to accelerate, was the epoch of the Risorgimento and the Unification of Germany. It was also an epoch which saw the last efforts of dynastic ancien régime empires (Habsburg, Romanov, Ottoman) to shore up their political systems with methods often borrowed from their adversaries, the nationalist liberals. Eric Hobsbawm's inspiring recent study has pointed out that, in the world after the French Revolution, it was no longer enough for monarchies to claim divine right; additional ideological reinforcement was required: “The need to provide a new, or at least a supplementary, ‘national’ foundation for this institution was felt in states as secure from revolution as George III's Britain and Nicholas I's Russia.”

scholarly journals SHINY THINGS AND SOVEREIGN LEGALITIES: EXPROPRIATION OF DYNASTIC PROPERTY IN THE LATE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND EARLY TURKISH REPUBLIC

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-463
Author(s):  
Ceyda Karamursel
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
World War ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
To Come ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

AbstractThis article probes the legal expropriation of dynastic property in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic. Focused on the period from Abdülhamid II's deposal in 1909 to the decade immediately following the abolition of the caliphate in 1924, it takes parliamentary debates as entry points for exploring how this legislative process redefined the sovereign's relationship with property. Although this process was initially limited only to Yıldız Palace, the debates that surrounded it heuristically helped to shape a new understanding of public ownership of property that was put to use in other contexts in the years to come, most notably during and after World War I and the Armenian genocide, before establishing itself as the foundation of a new ownership regime with the republican appropriation and reuse of property two decades later.

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