Sufism and Islamic Identity in Jalaluddin Rumi's Anatolia

The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey, 2024

This chapter surveys the evolution of Sufi institutions in Turkey in the 20th century as they were impacted by the modernist, secularist, and nationalist ideology and movement of the Republican era. The many Sufi orders, prominent during the Ottoman period, were abruptly closed by law in 1925 as part of the new Republic's modernizing reforms, and with their traditions now relegated to the past, the various orders and their members responded in different ways-by accepting the closure, by continuing underground, or by finding opportunities to assert themselves and their traditions. This chapter assesses these developments by focusing on the aspects of Sufism that were officially banned by the law -- the tombs of saints and the pilgrimage practices occurring at them, the dervish lodges and the rituals performed in them, and the Sufi orders as units of social organization and as traditions -- as well as the transmission of Sufi knowledge.

The article surveys the contents of the neglected Sufi treatise “The Gifts of the Merciful in Interpreting the Cosmic Order” from the 16th century, written by the Crimean scholar Ibrāhīm al-Qirīmī (d. 1593). It seems that his mystical heritage is an important contribution to the general development of the Halveti Sufi brotherhood. The study covers al-Qirīmī’ biography, formal descriptions of the manuscript, and its main topics. It is argued that al-Qirīmī outlined his vision of the Halveti doctrine of “ascent” (‘urūj) and “descent” (nuzūl), re-interpreting Halveti authorities of the past. It is also shown in the study that the author of the treatise compared his spiritual visions to current historical events, describing them in accordance with the patterns of cyclism. In this context, further studies of Ottoman Halveti thought may lead to a more comprehensive picture of 16th-century Ottoman Sufism.

Summer School in Sufi Studies, 2019

The aim of this third edition of the Summer School-Studies in Sufism is to bring together senior scholars, emerging researchers and postgraduate students working on Islamic thought, for a set of lectures, conversations and reading sessions on the theme Ibn 'Arabī and His Intepreters. All school lectures and activities will be in English, but as some of the sessions will consist in analyzes of original texts the ability to read classical Arabic is also desirable (it is not a prerequisite for admission though). All lectures will take place at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo. Set at the crossroads of East and West, this enchanting city, that is home to the three Abrahamic faiths, is often referred to as 'the Jerusalem of Europe'. As the meeting place of tradition and modernity, of eastern wisdom and western values, Sarajevo will also be the ideal location to reflect on the implications of Islamic metaphysical studies, and the Akbarian school of thought in particular, for the role and the future of Islam in our complex contemporary societies.

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2017

In 1922, a group of Bektashi dervishes stormed and destroyed the set of a motion picture being filmed in Istanbul. The film depicted a lust-driven Sufi master seducing his female disciples and milking their financial resources. It was based on the late Ottoman novel Nur Baba (1922) by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoǧlu (1889–1974), a popular and controversial work that had a lasting impact on the perception of Sufism in modern Turkey. Nur Baba was the first novel in Turkish that criticized Sufi practices and institutions, presenting an unflattering yet complex portrait of a Bektashi lodge on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. This article examines the novel’s approach to national history, its historical setting (during the reign of Abdulhamid II), and its close relationship to the intellectual concerns of the Second Constitutional period (1908–18) on class, gender, and sexual morality.

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2017

This article examines modernist-nationalist thought on Sufi lodges during the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic via the controversial novelNur Baba(1922) by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu. Widely translated and the basis of the first-ever Turkish motion picture,Nur Babadepicts a debauched Sufi lodge in turn-of-the-century Istanbul where drug use, alcoholism, and illicit amorous liaisons run amok. The novel played an important role in shaping public perceptions of Sufi lodges in the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire. This piece explores the novel's place among early 20th-century critiques of Sufism, its approach to national history, its historical setting (during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II), and its close relationship to the intellectual concerns of the Second Constitutional Period (1908–18). It argues for a revised understanding of the novel's historical setting and contends that the novel employs a combination of moralistic critique and romantic nostalgia ...

Sufism, the spiritual form of Islam, is nowadays present all over Europe. This spiritual path with his Shaykhs, who guides many people on the spiritual way, is in Western-Europe as community unexplored. The Sufi’s in Western-Europe has their own way of life. One of these Sufi path or Tariqa is the Qadiriyya. Qadiri Tariqa is the oldest Sufi order in the Islamic world, that’s founded by Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1165-66), which has all over the world many disciples. The aim of this paper is the migration of the Sufi – master and his settlement in Belgium. The Turkish Sufism in Belgium begins in the eighties with the immigration of the Sufi – master Abdullah Demircioglu. In this part we will delineate the genealogy of this Turkish Qadiri Sufi – master. Parallel with this, the settlement has given us a certain idea about the implant of the Sufi community in Belgium or Western-Europe.

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2001

Michałak, Mirosław and Zaborowska, Magdalena (eds.). In Quest of Identity: Studies on the Persianate World. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Akademnickie Dialog, 2015.

In this article, I firstly examine some of the ways in which various exclusivist nationalist interests have competed, and continue to compete, to appropriate Mawlānā for ends quite anathematic to his own ecumenical approach. I thus attempt to demonstrate that, far from giving voice to any specifically Persian or Iranian nationalist identity, Rūmī and his poetry have been appropriated by not only Iranian but also Afghan and Turkish nationalist discourses as means to assert their own ideological agendas. I then take a closer look at Mawlānā’s own conceptualization of identity. Drawing on selected passages from Rūmī’s magnum opus, the Masnavī, I attempt to demonstrate that Jalāl al-Dīn’s notion of identity, particularly of the nationally-constituted kind, remains steadfastly untied to sectarian affiliations, and thereby undermines the appropriative nationalist efforts adumbrated in the preceding section.

2019

there is a paradox inherent in late Medieval and early modern Sufism: 1 even though its practitioners believed this world to be nothing but an apparition, and aspired to eschew it in their pursuit of divine reality, Sufi masters who had fully detached themselves from this world were also thought to be in possession of tremendous power in the here and now. Even if the rise of more powerful territorial empires-most notably, those of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals-reined in the political ambitions of the Sufis in the early modern era, charismatic Sufi leaders continued to use their spiritual authority and worldly connections to weigh in on a variety of political matters in the new imperial contexts also. Because of a narrow conceptualisation of early modern Ottoman politics as the affairs of an increasingly bureaucratised state, however, Ottomanists have paid only scant attention to the political roles of Sufis after the fifteenth century. 2 † I dedicate this article to the memory of my dear friend Vangelis Kechriotis. He was a brilliant historian, a kind-hearted person, and a true embodiment of the Aristotelian idea of "man as a political animal". * Boğaziçi University. 1 The results of the present article are based on research funded by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2015-2020)/ERC Grant Agreement 648498, 'The Fashioning of a Sunni Orthodoxy and the Entangled Histories of Confession-Building in the Ottoman Empire, 15 th-17 th centuries'. I wrote the final version of the article as a visiting researcher at the Institut für Islamwissenschaft at the Freie Universität in Fall 2016. I would like to thank Gudrun Krämer for having made this affiliation possible. I would also like to thank

The Journal of Critical Global South Studies, 2019

Abstract: This paper examines the religio-political views of Sheikh Ubeydullah of Nehri, the leader of the 1880 Kurdish uprising. The paper makes use of new primary sources, which allow for offering a more coherent picture of the scopes and limits of Sheikh Ubeydullah’s views on a number of key issues, especially on topics of religious universalism and tolerance, Kurdish education, and Kurdish nationalism. The paper uses archival research and primary sources of his alleged anti-Christian views similar to those found among Turks drove the Sheik’s uprising. Instead, the paper argues that his views contrasted sharply with these and were, instead, rooted more in a Rumi-type religious universalism that was actually more hospitable to Christians. This paper particularly focuses on the Sheikh’s relation with non-Muslims and makes extensive use of the transcriptions of a two and an hour conversation between the Sheikh and an American missionary figure. This lengthy conversation unveils much about the motivations behind the 1880 Kurdish uprising and touches upon Ubeydullah previously unknown and, interestingly, unorthodox thoughts about religious universalism and religious tolerance.

Routledge Handbook on Sufism, 2021

Overview of some tarikats and cemaats in modern Turkey

Studia Islamika vol.3 no.3 (1996), 1-20, 1996

STUDIA ISLAMIKA 0ssN 0215-0492) is a iournal published quarterly by the /nstitut A84ma Islam Neged (IAIN, The State Instirute for Islamic Studie$ Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta. (sTT DEPPEN No. tzllsxplrJENfPc/sTT/1976) and sponsored by the Department of Religious Mairs of the Republic of Indonesia. It specializes in Indonesian Islamic studies, and is intended to communi' cate original researches and current issues on the subiect. This iournal warmly welcomes contributions from scholars of related disciplines' All arricles published do not necessarily represent the views of the lournal, or other institutions to which it is affiliated. They are solely the views of the authors