عنوان

Reforming Categories of Science and Religion in the Late Ottoman Empire

Number

TL48977

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Reforming Categories of Science and Religion in the Late Ottoman Empire

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Kenan Tekin

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Saliba, George

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Columbia University

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2016

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

277

Text of Note

Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-369-04793-6

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Discipline of degree

Middle East, South Asian and African Studies

Body granting the degree

Columbia University

Text preceding or following the note

2016

Text of Note

This dissertation shows that ideas of science and religion are not transhistorical by presenting a longue durée study of conceptions of science and religion in the Ottoman Empire. I demonstrate that the idea of science(s) was subject to a tectonic change over the course of a few centuries, namely between the early modern and modern period. Even within a specific epoch, conception of science and religion were in no way monolithic, as evidenced by the diversity of approaches to these categories in the early modern period. To point out continuity and change in the ideas of science and religion, I study classifications of sciences in the early modern Ottoman Empire, by comparing two works; one by Yahya Nev'î and the other by Saçaklızâde Muhammed el-Mar'aşî. Nev'î wrote from the context of the court in Istanbul, while Saçaklızâde represented the madrasa environment in an Anatolian province, thus providing a contrast in their orders of knowledge. In addition, the dissertation includes a study of the concept of 'jihat al-wahda' (aspect of unity) of science, as discussed by commentators from the early modern period. After first providing a textual genealogy, I argue that this concept reveals the dominant paradigm of scientific thinking during this period. The last two chapters of the dissertation deal with modern Ottoman history. The third chapter analyzes Ahmed Cevdet Pasha's (d. 1895) translation of Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah into the Ottoman Turkish in order to show the shift in the conception of science in the mid-nineteenth century. I demonstrate both continuity and a break between the thought of Ibn Khaldun and Ahmed Cevdet Pasha. In the fourth chapter, I draw upon archival documents, a scientific journal, and a correspondence between two intellectuals namely Fatma Aliye and Ahmed Midhat, to point out that science, religion, and politics were separated as a consequence of state regulations over publications and civil societies together with other institutional reforms and educational policies. The dissertation raises questions about the historiography of science in the modern period, which takes the modern idea of science for granted and projects it back on to the earlier periods. Noting the anachronistic and presentist approach to the early modern period, the dissertation calls for a new kind of historiography that not only goes beyond our modern biases but learns from past experiences by seriously engaging them.

Religion; Middle Eastern Studies; History

Subject Term

Philosophy, religion and theology;Social sciences;Islam;Manuscript and print cultures;Modernity;Ottoman empire;Science and religion;State

Borni, Karima Wolfe

Saliba, George

Subdivision

Middle East, South Asian and African Studies

Columbia University

Call Number

1832304390; 10149696

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y