The Kizilbash-Alevis in Ottoman Anatolia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayfer Karakaya-Stump
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Key Players ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
Folk Islam

The Kizilbash were at once key players in and the foremost victims of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict that defined the early modern Middle East today. Today referred to as Alevis, they constitute the second largest faith community in modern Turkey, making up around fifteen percent of the country’s population, with smaller pockets of related groups in the Balkans. Historians have typically treated Kizilbashism/Alevism as an undifferentiated strain within the hazy category of “heterodox folk Islam.” Several aspects of their history therefore remain little understood or explored. This first comprehensive socio-political history of the Kizilbash/Alevi communities uses a recently surfaced corpus of sources generated within their milieu. It offers fresh answers to many questions concerning their origins and evolution from a revolutionary movement to an inward-looking religious order. Among other things, it argues for a readjustment in focus from pre-Islamic Central Asia to the cosmopolitan Sufi milieu of the Middle East when exploring genealogies of popular Islam in Anatolia, and of Kizilbashism-Alevism, in particular. While the Kizilbash constitute the focus of the book, its findings may open new avenues of research in the study of other “heterodox” communities in the Islamic world by alerting historians to the potential of Sufism to provide a basis for social order and give rise to distinct communities.

The Disruptive Presence of the Namban-jin in Early Modern Japan

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 581-602
Author(s):  
Alexandra Curvelo
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Visual Display ◽  
The South ◽  
Early Modern Japan ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Elites ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
First Time ◽  
Folding Screens

Abstract When the Portuguese arrived in Japan around 1543, it was the first time in the history of the archipelago that Western foreigners had entered the country and settled there. These “barbarians from the south” (namban-jin) were considered strangers and viewed with curiosity and suspicion. In Tokugawa Japan (c. 1615-1868), politically marked by territorial unification and the centralization of power, the image of the Europeans that was created and visually registered on folding screens and lacquer-ware was used as a model to frame this presence by both the Japanese political and economic elites and those considered marginal to the existing social order. Namban art, especially paintings, can be seen as a visual display of Japan’s self-knowledge and its knowledge of distant “neighbours.”

Doctoring the Body and Exciting the Soul: Drugs and consumer culture in medieval and early modern Iran

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 554-617
Author(s):  
RANIN KAZEMI
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mass Consumption ◽  
History Of ◽  
Urban And Rural Areas

AbstractThis article focuses on the development of early modern consumerism in a part of the Middle East that historians of consumer culture are yet to fully explore. Making use of a wide variety of unexplored and underexplored original sources, the article contends that early modern consumer culture in Iran was grounded deeply in the ever-widening patterns of exchange and use that had developed slowly over the course of the previous centuries. The discussion below takes the growing popular interest in a few key psychoactive substances as a useful barometer of the dynamics of mass consumption, and chronicles how the slow and ever-expanding use of alcohol, opium, and cannabis (or a cannabis-like product) in the medieval period led to the popularity of coffee, tobacco, older drugs, and still other commodities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The aim here is to use the history of drug culture as an entry point to scrutinize the emergence of early modern consumerism among the elites and the non-elites in both urban and rural areas of the Middle East. In doing so, this article reconstructs the cultural and social history of recreational drugs prior to and during the early modern period, and elucidates the socio-economic context that helped bring about a ‘psychoactive revolution’ in the Safavid state (1501–1736).

Halil İnalcık 1916? - 2016

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-165
Author(s):  
Linda T. Darling
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
North Africa ◽  
World History ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Crucial Part

Halil İnalcık was born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, into a refugee family, probably in 1916 (he did not know his birthday; in Turkey he adopted 29 May, in the US 4 July). He died at age 100 in Ankara on 25 July 2016, as the premier Ottoman historian in the world. To quote one of his students, “Professor İnalcık transformed the field of Ottoman studies from an obscure and exotic subfield into one of the leading historical disciplines that covers the history of the greater Middle East and North Africa as well as the Balkans from the late medieval to the modern period. He set the tone of debate and critical inquiry from the early modern to the modern period.” Born an Ottoman, he made Ottoman studies a crucial part of world history.

Gender and Ottoman Social History

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Başak Tuğ
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Past Experiences

Starting with Said's critique of Orientalism but going well beyond it, poststructuralist and postcolonial critiques of modernity have challenged not only one-dimensional visions of Western modernity—by “multiplying” or “alternating” it with different modernities—but also the binaries between the modern and the traditional/premodern/early modern, thus resulting in novel, more inclusive ways of thinking about past experiences. Yet, while scholars working on the Middle East have successfully struggled against the Orientalist perception of the Middle East asthetradition constructed in opposition to the Western modern, they often have difficulties in deconstructing the traditionwithin, that is, the premodern past. They have traced the alternative and multiple forms of modernities in Middle Eastern geography within the temporal borders of “modernity.” However, going beyond this temporality and constructing new concepts—beyond the notion of tradition—to understand the specificities of past experiences (which are still in relationship with the present) remains underdeveloped in the social history of the Middle East.

Aḥmad Yasavī and the Ismāʿīlīs of Badakhshān: Towards a New Social History of Sufi-Shīʿī Relations in Central Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 643-681
Author(s):  
Daniel Beben
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This article examines how a text attributed to the renowned Central Asian Sufi figure Aḥmad Yasavī came to be found within a manuscript produced within the Ismāʿīlī Shīʿī community of the Shughnān district of the Badakhshān region of Central Asia. The adoption of this text into an Ismāʿīlī codex suggests an exchange between two disparate Islamic religious traditions in Central Asia between which there has hitherto been little evidence of contact. Previous scholarship on Ismāʿīlī-Sufi relations has focused predominately on the literary and intellectual engagement between these traditions, while the history of persecution experienced by the Ismāʿīlīs at the hands of Sunnī Muslims has largely overshadowed discussions of the social relationship between the Ismāʿīlīs and other Muslim communities in Central Asia. I demonstrate that this textual exchange provides evidence for a previously unstudied social engagement between Ismāʿīlī and Sunnī communities in Central Asia that was facilitated by the rise of the Khanate of Khoqand in the 18th century. The mountainous territory of Shughnān, where the manuscript under consideration originated, has been typically represented in scholarship as isolated prior to the onset of colonial interest in the region in the late 19th century. Building upon recent research on the impact of early modern globalization on Central Asia, I demonstrate that even this remote region was significantly affected by the intensification of globalizing processes in the century preceding the Russian conquest. Accordingly, I take this textual exchange as a starting point for a broader re-evaluation of the Ismāʿīlī-Sufi relationship in Central Asia and of the social ‘connectivity’ of the Ismāʿīlīs and the Badakhshān region within early modern Eurasia.

The Empire of Tamerlane as an Adaptation of the Mongol Empire: An answer to David Morgan, “The Empire of Tamerlane: An Unsuccessful Re-Run of the Mongol State?”

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 281-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEATRICE F. MANZ
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Regional State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mongol Empire ◽  
David Morgan ◽  
Letters Of Recommendation

AbstractI write this article in the spirit of the Persian poetic tradition, in which an answer to an earlier work takes off from the original and charts its own course. I will suggest that Tamerlane's recreation of the Mongol Empire was symbolic, and was part of his successful creation of a regional state which was at once Turco-Mongolian and Perso-Islamic. His experiment was continued and elaborated by his successors, and the resulting state provided a highly useful model for later dynasties in the Middle East and Central Asia.Through my long engagement with Mongols and Turks, David Morgan's influence and aid have been a constant advantage and his friendship a recurring pleasure. Our acquaintance began in 1987 with a kind letter he sent me after reading the manuscript forThe Rise and Rule of Tamerlanefor the Cambridge University Press. Since then I have profited from his scholarship, have used his two books to teach generations of students, and have called on him for uncountable letters of recommendation, always generously given. I also want to thank David for asking me to write the Mongol chapter for theNew Cambridge History of Islam, and thus attracting me into the Mongol period. It may seem odd to express my gratitude by writing an answer to David's article which is not entirely in agreement with his conclusions. I trust in the well-known openness of his mind and assume that he will take this in the spirit in which it is offered, as the continuation of many years of discussion.

scholarly journals The Renewal of Tradition in the Political Thought of Early Modern Japan: The Confucian Concept of Dao and the Question of the Origin of Social Order in Ogyū Sorai’s Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 149-181
Author(s):  
Valentin Matveenko
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern Japan ◽  
Confucian Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ogyu Sorai ◽  
Political Works ◽  
The Way

In Japan’s early modern period, Confucian philosophy was considered as a pattern of political discourse. Hence, many Japanese thinkers of the time were involved into solving political problems. The paper deals with the theory of social order developed by Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728), a major Confucian philosopher and the most progressive thinker of the time, who criticized modern schools for the practical incompetence of their ideas. Sorai’s theory unfolded around the idea of the Way of Early Kings, which he saw as a complex of principles that formed the foundation of social order. The Confucian concept of Dao is fundamental for this idea, the ethical interpretation of which was proposed by Sorai’s contemporaries, while Sorai considered the Way as a political category. The paper begins with a brief introduction to the role that Confucian thought played in the forming of the language of political discourse in Japan. Further, the author discusses Sorai’s ideas on the early kings and the Way created by them, as well as on social order, the role of the ruler, and human nature. The author pays special attention to Sorai’s theory of language that connects his lexicographic and political works. The fact is that since Sorai’s attention to the Way was grounded on his methodology, he believed that careful work with the language was the way to proper government and social order. The article concludes with an analysis of the way Sorai theorized the concept of Dao. On one hand, in his practical precepts, Sorai offered a pragmatic and politically-problematized interpretation of Dao. On the other hand, in his ideas on Heaven, gods, and spirits, Sorai offered a metaphysical perspective of Dao that is characterized with concerns for ontological and epistemological questions. As a result, in order to point out the significance of Sorai’s utilitarian and disenchanting world ideas since they were an important step in the history of Japanese philosophy that preceded modernity, the author attempts to describe Ogyū Sorai’s logic of social order based on both the pragmatical and metaphysical perspectives of his theory.

scholarly journals China and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Daniel S. Markey
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Arms Sales ◽  
History Of ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Infrastructure Investments ◽  
Global Initiatives

This chapter introduces China’s new global initiatives like the vaunted “Belt and Road” and previews how the political and economic interests of other states in South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East tend to set the conditions for Chinese activities and shape regional outcomes. It leads with the history of China’s involvement in Pakistan’s Gwadar port. It then identifies ways in which Eurasia’s powerful and privileged groups often expect to profit from their connections to China, while others fear commercial and political losses. Similarly, it foreshadows how statesmen across Eurasia are scrambling to harness China’s energy purchases, arms sales, and infrastructure investments to outdo strategic competitors, like India and Saudi Arabia, while negotiating relations with Russia and the United States. This chapter introduces the book’s subsequent chapters on China’s Eurasian aspirations, South Asia and China, Central Asia and China, the Middle East and China, and the American policy response.

Conclusions

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-184
Author(s):  
Alberto Tiburcio
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
History Of

The conclusions analyse the findings of the book mainly in terms of its contribution to: 1) the history of Muslim-Christian relations in Safavid Iran and in the early modern Middle East at large, 2) the history of the genre of interreligious polemics and “signs of the prophecy”, 3) the broader intellectual history of Shiʿi thought in Iran, and 4) debates on the question of confessionalisation in the early modern Middle East

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