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ABSTRACT
This thematic issue brings together articles on non-Sunni Muslim communities in the Ottoman Empire between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on case studies from Bayrami-Melami, Kızılbaş, Nusayri and Twelver Shii contexts, the issue investigates the different modes in which the Ottoman state and these parts of its population encountered and perceived each other. At times severely persecuting them, the state also applied other, more accommodative measures towards these groups, which Sharia-minded Muslims may regard as ‘heretics’. This thematic issue explores the dynamics of these different relations between the state and these ambivalent subjects. Focusing on specific constellations of time and place and using a variety of sources from both local and central administration archives, the articles explore the historical context of the diverse policies of persecution and accommodation, collaboration and resistance that were implemented. The overall argument is for a perspective that historicizes Ottoman politics of difference in order to go beyond essentialist notions of timeless ‘heretics’ on the one hand and a seemingly monolithic, Sunni Muslim body politic on the other.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Tezcan, ‘Ethnicity’, 159.
2 Research on confessionalization has gained much pace in recent decades, especially with the various works by Tijana Krstić and Derin Terzioğlu, including: Terzioğlu, ‘How to Conceptualize’; idem, ‘Sufis’; Krstić, Contested Conversions; Krstić and Terzioğlu, Entangled Confessionalizations?; Krstić and Terzioğlu, Historicizing Sunni Islam. Adding to this fresh development of research on Ottoman religious history, see also: Burak, ‘Second Formation’; Yılmaz, Caliphate Redefined.
3 ‘From Rebels to reaya’ is a heading in a subchapter in Winter’s, History of the ʿAlawis, 116.
4 For such a comparative ambition, see also Barkey, Empire of Difference.
5 The application of the rules and legal reasoning on non-Muslim subjects was far from uniform, both in the Ottoman Empire and in pre-Ottoman times. See for this context in general, Ursinus, ‘Millet’; Noth, ‘Abgrenzungsprobleme’; Pink, ‘Islam und Nichtmuslime’.
6 The attribution of these rules to ʿUmar may refer not to the second Caliph ʿUmar b. al Khaṭṭāb (r. 634–644), but to the Umayyad Caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 717–720) as the one who institutionalized their implementation. Pink, ‘Islam und Nichtmuslime’, 488.
7 Salzmann, ’Moral Economy’, 304.
8 Ibid., 301
9 Ursinus, ‘Diskussion um “millet”’, 202; Braude, ‘Foundation Myths’, 74.
10 Friedmann, ‘Ibn Taymiyya’s Fatāwā’, 349.
11 Imber, ‘Persecution’; Deringil, ‘Struggle’; Kern, Imperial Citizen.
12 Sohrweide, Der Sieg der Safawiden, 138.
13 See the contribution by Ines Aščerić-Todd in this special issue. For a general overview on this topic, see also Ocak, Osmanlı Toplumunda.
14 Friedmann, ‘Ibn Taymiyya’s Fatāwā’, 360; on fetvās by Ottoman scholars against the Kızılbaş, see Karakaya-Stump, Kizilbash-Alevis, 283.
15 See for example Ortaylı, ‘Les groupes hétérodoxes’; Shankland, ‘Heterodox Movements’; Schäbler, ‘Heterodoxies’; Veinstein, Syncrétismes et hérésies.
16 Lewis, ‘Observations’, 57.
17 Knysh, ’Orthodoxy and Heresy’, 48.
18 Ibid., 66–7. Josef van Ess also suggests that the term ‘orthodoxy’ should only be used for locally variant forms of consensus; van Ess, Der Eine, 2: 1303. Robert Langer and Udo Simon likewise emphasize, referring to Talal Asad, the contingent aspect of power in stabilizing (and destabilizing) norms and practices as ‘orthodox’; Langer and Simon, ‘Dynamics’.
19 Dressler, Review of Syncrétismes et hérésies, 139
20 Ibid.
21 Dressler, ‘How to Conceptualize’, 259
22 White, Emergence of Minorities, 2.
23 Greene, Minorities.
24 Blumi, Review of Minorities, 159.
25 Göçek, ‘Legal Recourse’.
26 Blumi, Review of Minorities, 159.
27 On such fresh perspectives regarding the Shiis, Druze and Alawis, see Winter, Shiites of Lebanon; idem, History of the ʿAlawis; Alkan, Non-Sunni Muslims. On Ismaʿilis, see Merali, ‘Fear and Violence’; idem, ‘Legitimising Authority’. On Kızılbaş-Alevis in Ottoman Anatolia, see Weineck, Zwischen Verfolgung und Eingliederung.
28 Since no such term exists in Arabic, these texts were usually called risāla.
29 De Jong and Radtke, ‘Introduction‘, 2–3; Eberhard, Osmanische Polemik, 5.
30 Harputlu İshak Efendi, Kāşifü ‘l-esrār, 1874.
31 Ibid; on this risale, see also Weineck, ‘Fabricating the “Great Mass”’, 149.
32 On this text, see Eberhard, Osmanische Polemik, 205.
33 Pretzl, Ibāhija, 12, 33.
34 Weineck, ‘Fabricating the “Great Mass”’, 152.
35 On these template- and topoi-like accusations, see also Berger, Gesellschaft und Individuum, 290.
36 Shafir, ‘How to Read “Heresy”’, 222
37 Ibid., 198.
38 Ibid., 227.
39 Friedmann, ‘Ibn Taymiyya’s Fatāwā’, 357.
40 See Aščerić-Todd’s text in this issue.
41 Yılmaz, Calipahte Redefined, 256.
42 Bauer, Der Kultur der Ambiguität, 194.
43 Shahab Ahmed therefore speaks of ‘coherent contradictions’ in order to emphasize the plurality of discourse and practice within Islamic societies at large. Ahmed, What Is Islam?, 6, 405.
44 Bauer, Der Kultur der Ambiguität, 194–6.
45 He speaks of ‘terminological sacralization’; ibid., 195.
46 Ergene, Local Court, 167.
47 Peirce, Morality Tales, 267.
48 El-Rouayheb, ‘Heresy and Sufism’, 373.
49 Van Ess, Der Eine, 2: 1327.
50 Ibid., 1328.
51 Winter, Shiites; idem, History of the ‘Alawīs; idem, ‘Kızılbaş’.
52 Winter, ‘Kızılbaş’, 178; idem, History of the ʿAlawis, 124–36.
53 Karkaya-Stump, Kizilbash-Alevis, 295
54 Griffel, ‘Toleration and Exclusion’, 344; Karakaya-Stump, Kizilbash-Alevis, 294–5.
55 Barkey, Empire of Difference, 155.
56 Ibid., 112–13.
57 Ibid., 110.
58 For insightful comment on this issue of Ottoman tolerance, see Baer, Makdisi and Shryock, ‘Tolerance and Conversion’, 928.
59 Barkey, Empire of Difference, 120.
60 For such examples, see Weineck’s contribution in this special issue.
61 Dağlı, ‘Limits of Pragmatism’, 194–5.
62 Ibid., 204.
63 Tezcan, ‘Ethnicity’, 163.
64 Although there were indeed mechanisms to increase security and surveillance of people – for example via the instrument of kefālet, in which there were legal guarantors responsible for other people’s behaviour. See also the examples in Aščerić-Todd’s contribution.
65 Barkey, Empire of Difference, 155.
66 Majer, Das Osmanische ‘Registerbuch’; Ursinus, Grievance Administration; Toprakyaran, Das osmanische Petitionswesen.
67 Darling, History of Social Justice.