Abstract This article examines the persistent yet unstable entanglement between sultanic authority and the miraculous in the Ottoman Empire. It argues that kerâmet was never a routine attribute of kingship but a selective mode of political communication activated at moments of crisis and transformation. By situating the Ottoman experience within a wider Eurasian field of sacral kingship, it reconstructs a longue durée genealogy of kerâmet from early dynastic memory to the age of print. Drawing on hagiographies, chronicles, epigraphy, and official newspapers, it shows that miraculous claims tended to cluster when established bases of legitimacy were strained, yet just as readily receded when coercion or bureaucratic competence could suffice. Rather than a Weberian oscillation between rational-legal and charismatic authority, the study identifies a flexible “grammar” of sacral kingship, in which Ottoman sultans modulated the miraculous—invoking it when useful, withholding it when dangerous, and thereby expanding the repertoire of imperial legitimacy.
Résumé La réputation d’hostilité d’Ibn Taymiyya vis-à-vis de la figure de ʿAlī ( naṣb ) a traversé les siècles. Le supposé penchant anti-ʿAlide de cet auteur est devenu, avec le temps, un élément incontournable des débats internes au sunnisme. Notre contribution vise à retracer l’historique de cette réputation et de montrer son utilisation dans le contexte de la concurrence pour l’orthodoxie que connaît le sunnisme depuis l’avènement du wahhabisme. Nous explorons la littérature religieuse du vingtième siècle, notamment les écrits de Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawṯarī (m. 1951) ; Aḥmad et ʿAbd Allāh al-Ġumārī (m. 1960 et 1993) ; Ḥasan b. Farḥān al-Malikī (1970-) et Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Saqqāf (1961-), mais aussi les prêches de ʿAdnān Ibrahīm (1966-) diffusés sur Internet, afin d’illustrer la manière dont s’articule le débat autour de l’hostilité (supposée ou réelle) d’Ibn Taymiyya vis-à-vis de ʿAlī et de sa famille. Nous mettons au jour les principaux arguments des contempteurs d’Ibn Taymiyya ainsi que ceux de ses défenseurs.
Abstract What was the place of sharīʿa in the USSR? Did Communist authorities take measures to adjust sharīʿa to social and institutional change? Or was sharīʿa crushed under the heavy march of Soviet modernization? A collection of manuscript records preserved today in the mosque of Karabudakhkent in central Daghestan affords us the opportunity to rethink the space that sharīʿa occupied in the public sphere in the North Caucasus after the Second World War beyond the official scholarly network of the local Muslim Spiritual Board. Resurfacing now after decades of oblivion, this documentation allows us to appreciate how between the 1950s and 1960s Muslim communities living under the rule of the one-party state endowed sharīʿa with normative force in spite of the official ban on Islamic law courts. Such a documentation helps us furthermore to illuminate the peculiar trajectory of legal hermeneutics ( furūʿ al-fiqh ) in the Soviet Union, and shed light on the textual traditions which acquired, preserved, or lost authority in the eyes of the local scholars of Islam after WWII.
Abstract This article provides a genealogy of attempts by Mamluk and Ottoman rulers and governors to regulate, seize and liquidate awqāf from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century in Egypt. While studies on siyāsa sharʿiyya have shown how rulers could intervene in waqf regulation under claims of istibdāl , this article explores the relationship between siyāsa and awqāf . It elucidates a certain limit to rulers’ attempts to regulate awqāf by looking at how nineteenth-century jurists cited fourteenth-century jurisprudential precedents in a bid to resist encroachments by the ruler in their domain. Before the nineteenth century, rulers encountered obstacles when interfering in endowments, evincing a limit to the siyāsa prerogative of the ruler to legislate new jurisprudential norms. But after the nineteenth century, istibdāl became a norm much to the chagrin of jurists and judges, making the ruler’s ability to seize awqāf , and intervene in its norms, unencumbered.
This article, which is based on the reading of a large number of writings by Ziya Gökalp, describes comprehensively the intellectual evolution of this major thinker of the end of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of the Republic of Turkey. In the context of the transition from empire to nation state, Gökalp developed a sociological thought closely correlated with the political developments of his time. Without being a mere propagandist for the Committee of Union and Progress, his way of translating and adapting the sources of his thought reveals its political leanings towards a society cleansed of its religious and ethnic minorities.
Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid (1872–1963) stands among the most creative and impactful modern Egyptian intellectuals. Commonly held historiography identifies him as an apologist and collaborator with British colonialism. This article casts doubt on this view, arguing that a close reading of Luṭfī’s writing alongside understanding his activism can be more accurately contextualised within the constructs of Enlightened decolonialism. By reviewing Luṭfī’s nationalist thought and analysing his interactions with the British consuls-general, his staunch opposition to the colonial enterprise emerges highlighting his pioneering commitment to the Egyptian national struggle for independence and self-determination. Indeed, Luṭfī saw decolonial efforts as part and parcel of his overarching endeavour to domesticate the Enlightenment to his local environment.
This article examines the first Arabic translations of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1965) and Critique of Practical Reason (1966) in light of the intellectual journey of their translator, Aḥmad al-Šaybānī (1923–95). It argues that, shaped by experiences of repression, exile, and a search for identity, al-Šaybānī developed in his own writings a core moral concern centered on human dignity, freedom, and rationalism—values that he perceived to be upheld by Islam and threatened by what he calls “materialism”. As the prefaces to his translations show, Kant helped him synthesize these beliefs, including his religious convictions. By offering a historically grounded perspective on Kant as a global thinker that goes beyond parochial Eurocentric truth claims, this article also draws attention to a philosophical engagement with the political and social changes of the postcolonial Middle East that evades the ideological framing prevalent in the intellectual historiography of that era.
The abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 represented a critical juncture in Muslim thought and has often been seen as succeeded by a widespread turn to territorial nationalism. This article contributes to the growing scholarship that has underlined the more conflictual and ambivalent nature of post-Ottoman Muslim thought by focusing on the case of Easternism (al-Fikra al-Sharqiyya), an Egyptcentered intellectual community and network that envisioned the Muslim world as part of a larger "East" and a "worldmaking" project of anticolonial cooperation from North Africa to Japan. Drawing on a range of intellectual writings and intelligence sources, the article outlines the history of Easternism from the late Ottoman era into the 1930s and argues that while Easternism interlaced with more well-known modes of Muslim thought - such as Ottomanism, pan-Islamism, Islamic reform, territorial nationalism and Arab nationalism - it still managed to come into its own as a distinct vision.
This paper re-evaluates the history of Ottoman censorship through the lens of conceptual history, focusing on how the periodical press of Damascus and Beirut reported incidents of violence between 1875 and 1914. I argue that well into the twentieth century, the Ottoman state had insufficient power to comprehensively enforce censorship. Instead, the press and the state were interdependent and shared the belief in a modernising project with the ever-expanding state at its core. The press largely understood its role as serving society as it moved along this path to progress and prosperity. Thus, we encounter deeply entrenched editorial tactics, epitomised by the reference to generic “incidents”, to deal with the tension between violence as a quotidian phenomenon and its very occurrence being perceived as a fundamental challenge to the social contract. Analysing the tactics used to delegitimise acts of violence and their perpetrators, the paper establishes an ontology and a topography of the discourse on violence in the late Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean.
This study examines how Saudi Salafism, as a modern ideological construct, has gradually linked the theological teachings about the monotheism of the Divine names and attributes tawh & imacr;d al-asm & amacr;' wa-l-s if & amacr;t) of the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263- 1328) with the teachings of his later Hanbali fellow Muhammad b. `Abd al-Wahh & amacr;b (1703/04-1792). Within this process, the topic has been turned from a peripheral one into a crucial criterion of defining "Salafi-ness" as such. In this sense, to be a Salafi means to be a follower of the Divine names and attributes in the Hanbali interpretation of Ibn Taymiyya as opposed to the mainstream Ash`ari (and M & amacr;turidi) theology. This criterion, as the authors argue, has been instrumentalized as a tool of claiming one's legitimacy and superiority.
This article focuses on three pseudepigraphic protection letters from Yemen, ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad. The Judaeo-Arabic copies of these texts date back to the 18th to 20th century in Yemen and are considered forgeries. Although they may partially derive from genuine treaties, they have been found to be authored or edited in their current form by members of the Jewish community. This article explores the historical and political contexts in which these protection letters were likely written, how they were adapted from Islamic literary texts, and later modified to be applied in the Yemeni-Zayd & imacr; - and possibly tribal-context. In doing so, the article sheds light on the agency and strategies Yemeni Jews applied while being dhimm & imacr;s, as well as the "protected people"'s knowledge of Islamic historical and legal literature
The historiography of falsafa in Persian as a genre of philosophical literature is a young phenomenon, rooted in the encounter of the Iranian philosophical community with modern European philosophy. European historiography of philosophy as a discipline is itself modern and was initiated in the eighteenth century and evolved thereafter with the historiography of falsafa as its by-product. Despite its relative youth, Persian historiography of falsafa has yielded considerable outcomes. This paper outlines the historical trajectory leading to the emergence of this new genre of philosophical literature in Iran. It then provides a classification of these works and highlights their salient features. This body of literature offers insights not only for philosophers but also for scholars of cultural studies, social sciences, and political sciences, given that Persian historiographies, like their European counterparts, have also been employed to endorse political or religious identities through the construction of nativist or non-nativist grand narratives.
