Aktuelle(s) Projekt(e)

Concepts of Boundaries and the Construction of Sociocultural Difference in (Trans)Ottoman Contexts: Circulation of Knowledge, Conceptual Changes and Transfers, 16th-19th Centuries

The project documents and maps out the complex semantic field which underlies discourses about establishing, negotiating and transgressing social boundaries in the Ottoman context, adopting a broad time frame that spans from the 16th to the early 19th century. Delving into the subject of social boundaries in the Ottoman world comes with the realisation that to merely translate modern and Western concepts is of limited use: The direct translation of “boundary“, the Ottoman term ḥadd, can indeed be encountered in the Ottoman sources. However, other notions, e.g. the idea of an involuntary mixing or mingling (iḫtilāṭ) when talking about social boundaries, need to be taken into account to do justice to the complexities and internal dynamics of the Ottoman discourse. For theoretical support, the project draws on the field of conceptual history: Ottoman notions of boundaries will be read as complex semantic configurations, whose specific genealogies and trajectories can be traced. Changes over time in meaning, strategies of translation and appropriations, as well as differences between various genres and contexts in Ottoman usage will be recorded to explore two key hypotheses: First, Ottoman semantics pertaining to sociocultural boundaries are subject to changes which are related to broader transformations within Ottoman society. Second, the Ottoman semantics under scrutiny here do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they are products of continuous exchanges and transfers of knowledge, thus reflecting epistemological entanglements and shedding light on frameworks of interactions that extend beyond the territorial borders of the Ottoman Empire. In terms of source material, the project puts normative texts in conversation with sources describing individual and concrete instances of negotiations of social boundaries. Moments in which social boundaries are being discussed are tracked down in a wide variety of sources, including legal discourse, advice literature and fictional texts, with a geographical focus on the Ottoman provincial centres of Trabzon and Diyarbekir.

Monographien (und Dissertation)

Non-Sunni Muslims in the Late Ottoman Empire: State and Missionary Perceptions of the Alawis (I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, February 2022).

Dissent and Heterodoxy in the late Ottoman Empire: Reformers, Babis and Baha’is (revised PhD thesis; ISIS Press: Istanbul, 2008).

Artikel

“The Late Ottoman Sunni Missionary Project”, in: Karène Sanchez Summerer et al., Comparing and decompartmentalising the analysis of the missionary phenomenon in North Africa and the Middle East (19th-20th centuries) (forthcoming Brill).

Co-author with Todd Lawson, “The Qur’ān in Bahā’ī Writings”, in: Georges Tamer (ed.), Handbook of Qur’ānic Hermeneutics (forthcoming De Gruyter).

“‘Abdu’l-Bahá ‘Abbás”, in: Robert Stockman (ed.), The World of the Bahá’í Faith: A Handbook (Routledge 2022).

“Epitaph of a Muslim, Caesarea”, in: Moshe Sharon, Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae (CIAP), vol. 7, J (2), (Brill: Leiden 2021), pp. 3-4.

“Nazif, Süleyman”, in: Encyclopædia Iranica (ed. Ehsan Yarshater†), online: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-iranica-online/nazif-suleyman-COM_337692 (2021).

“The Ottoman Policy of ‘Correction of Belief(s)’”, in: Vefa Erginbaş (ed.), Ottoman Sunnism: New Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), pp. 166-192.

“Alawiten – Geschichte, Glaubenssystem und Situation in Deutschland”, in: Udo Tworuschka/Michael Klöcker (eds.), Handbuch der Religionen (HdR) EL 60 (Westarp Verlag, 2019).

“Alawiten-Islamisch”, in: Lexikon für Kirchen- und Religionsrecht, Philosophisch- Theologische Hochschule Sankt Georgen, Frankfurt/Main, Germany (2019); DOI: 10.30965/9783506786371_0073

“Re-edition of The Turkish Inscription at the Quarantine of Hebron”, in: Moshe Sharon, CIAP, vol. 6, J (1), (Brill: Leiden, 2016), pp. 7-11.

“The Aṣḥāb al-Kahf Inscription of Sabil al-Mahmudi in Jaffa”, in: Moshe Sharon, CIAP, vol. 6, J (1), (Brill: Leiden, 2016), pp. 74-76.

“Turkish Epitaph of a Muslim in Jaffa (before 1245/1829?)”, in: Moshe Sharon, CIAP, vol. 6, J (1), (Brill: Leiden, 2016), pp. 103-105.

“Turkish Inscription of the Jaffa Police Station (Kishle)”, in: Moshe Sharon, CIAP, vol. 6, J (1), (Brill: Leiden, 2016), pp. 119-121.

“Filistin’de Jön Türkler ve Bahailer”, in: Eyal Ginio/Yuval Ben Bassat (tr. Erkal Ünal), Jön Türklerin Filistin’i (Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları: Istanbul, 2016), pp. 217-240.

“Divide and Rule: The Creation of the Alawi State after World War I”, Fikrun wa Fann (Art and Thought), no. 100: 100 Years First World War (a publication of the Goethe Institut). Also available in German, Arabic and Persian translation.

“Commentary for the Turkish Inscription at the Quarantine of Hebron”, in: Moshe Sharon, (CIAP) vol. 5, H-I (Brill: Leiden, 2013), pp. 233-235.

“Fighting for the Nusayri Soul: State, Protestant Missionaries and the Alawis in the Late Ottoman Empire”, in: Die Welt des Islams 52:1 (2012), pp. 23-50.

“Medhat Pasha”, Encyclopædia Iranica (ed. Ehsan Yarshater), online: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/medhat-pasha (2012)

“The Young Turks and the Baha'is in Palestine”, in: Eyal Ginio/Yuval Ben Bassat, Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule (I.B. Tauris: London, 2011), pp. 259-278.

“Bahailik ve Jön Türk Devrimi”, in: Tarih ve Toplum: Yeni Yaklaşımlar, no. 11 (Güz 2010), p. 23-46.

“Süleyman Nazif’s ‘Open Letter to Jesus’: An Anti-Christian Polemic in the Early Turkish Republic”, Middle Eastern Studies 44:6 (2008), pp. 851–865.

“İsa’ya Mektup”, Atlas, no. 156, Mart 2006 (Islamophobia), pp. 132-135 (commentary on Muslim-Christian polemics, with reference to the “cartoon crisis”).

“Midhat Pasha and ‘Abdu’l-Baha in ‘Akka: The Historical Background of the Tablet of the Land of Ba”, in: Baha’i Studies Review 13 (2005), pp. 1-15.

“‘The Eternal Enemy of Islām’: Abdullah Cevdet and the Baha’i Religion”, in: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 68/1 (2005), pp. 1-20.

“Ottoman Reform Movements and the Bahā’ī Faith, 1860s – 1920s”, in: Moshe Sharon (ed.), Studies in Modern Religions, Religious Movements and the Bābī-Bahā’ī Faiths (Brill: Leiden, 2004), pp. 253-274.

‘Abdu’l-Baha’s commentary on the Islamic tradition: ‘God doth give victory to this religion by means of a wicked man’ – a provisional translation and notes, in: Baha’i Studies Review 11 (2003), pp. 53-57.

“‘By the Fig and the Olive’: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Commentary in Ottoman Turkish on the Qur’ánic Sura 95 – notes and provisional translation”, in: Baha’i Studies Review 10 (2001/2002), pp. 115-128.