“Those Heretics Gathering Secretly …”: Qizilbash Rituals and Practices in the Ottoman Empire according to Early Modern Sources

Author(s):  
Baltacıoğlu-Brammer
Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 214-241
Author(s):  
Aslıhan Gürbüzel

Abstract What is the language of heaven? Is Arabic the only language allowed in the eternal world of the virtuous, or will Muslims continue to speak their native languages in the other world? While learned scholars debated the language of heaven since the early days of Islam, the question gained renewed vigor in seventeenth century Istanbul against the background of a puritan reform movement which criticized the usage of Persian and the Persianate canon as sacred text. In response, Mevlevī authors argued for the discursive authority of the Persianate mystical canon in Islamic tradition (sunna). Focusing on this debate, this article argues that early modern Ottoman authors recognized non-legal discourses as integral and constitutive parts of the Islamic tradition. By adopting the imagery of bilingual heaven, they conceptualized Islamic tradition as a diverse discursive tradition. Alongside diversity, another important feature of Persianate Islam was a positive propensity towards innovations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
Mária Pakucs-Willcocks

Abstract This paper analyzes data from customs accounts in Transylvania from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth on traffic in textiles and textile products from the Ottoman Empire. Cotton was known and commercialized in Transylvania from the fifteenth century; serial data will show that traffic in Ottoman cotton and silk textiles as well as in textile objects such as carpets grew considerably during the second half of the seventeenth century. Customs registers from that period also indicate that Poland and Hungary were destinations for Ottoman imports, but Transylvania was a consumer’s market for cotton textiles.


DIYÂR ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-26
Author(s):  
Hasmik Kirakosyan ◽  
Ani Sargsyan

The glossary Daḳāyiḳu l-ḥaḳāyiḳ by Kemālpaşazāde is a valuable lexicological work that demonstrates the appropriation of medieval lexicographic methodologies as a means of spreading knowledge of the Persian language in the Transottoman realm. The article aims to analyse this Persian-Ottoman Turkish philological text based on the Arabic and Persian lexicographic traditions of the Early Modern period. The advanced approaches to morphological, lexical and semantic analysis of Persian can be witnessed when examining the Persian word units in the glossary. The study of the methods of the glossary attests to the prestigious status of the Persian language in the Ottoman Empire at a time when Turkish was strengthening its multi-faceted positions. Taking into account the linguistic analysis methods that were available in the sixteenth century, contemporary philological research is suggesting new etymologies for some Persian words and introduces novel lemmata, which make their first-time appearance in Persian vocabulary.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Faisal H. Husain

This chapter introduces the themes and arguments of the book. In particular, it explains the benefits of adopting a holistic approach to the history of the river basin that acknowledges its cultural, physical, and biological unity. Treating the Tigris and Euphrates as a continuous whole brings to light the magnitude and significance of river flow that fostered contacts between upstream and downstream regions. Beyond facilitating communication, the twin rivers formed the backbone of the early modern Ottoman economy in the region by supporting complementary subsistence strategies, such as irrigation agriculture, animal husbandry, and wetland exploitation. In addition to the themes and arguments, this chapter offers a brief introduction to the history of the Ottoman Empire and the ecology of the Tigris-Euphrates basin.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua M. White

The essay takes a non-Eurocentric point of view and aims to highlight the concurrent concepts of piracy and other forms of maritime violence in the early modern Mediterranean. The author shows that a wide range of concepts were used in the early modern Ottoman Empire to conceptualize what Europeans termed piracy or privateering. As in Europe, there was considerable ambiguity in the use and interpretation of these terms, and the practices that they described. In contrast to the emphasis that contemporary Europeans put on the distinction between piracy and privateering, in theory if not always in practice, Ottoman Islamic law did not differentiate between foreign Christian pirates and foreign Christian corsairs or privateers.


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