عنوان

The Road from Damascus: Circulation and the Redefinition of Islam in the Ottoman Empire, 1620-1720

Number

TL49033

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

The Road from Damascus: Circulation and the Redefinition of Islam in the Ottoman Empire, 1620-1720

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Nir Shafir

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay; Green, Nile

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of California, Los Angeles

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2016

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

388

Text of Note

Committee members: Cooperson, Michael; Greene, Molly; Jacob, Margaret

Text of Note

Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-369-16486-2

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Discipline of degree

History

Body granting the degree

University of California, Los Angeles

Text preceding or following the note

2016

Text of Note

In the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire was marked by constant polemical disputes over Islamic religious practices. By the end of the century, these debates, which covered topics as varied as the permissibility of smoking tobacco or saint worship, had become so heated the many Muslims in the empire were willing to declare their co-religionists heretics. I use these polemical disputes as a setting in which to explore theories and approaches of religious transformation in the Islamic world. Rather than emphasize religious change driven by socio-economic forces or the disciplinary mechanisms of the state, I focus instead on how Islamic religiosity changed as it became increasingly entangled in the material world of the Eastern Mediterranean. I argue that intensified regimes of circulation of objects and people, especially between the Arabic and Turkish-speaking (Rumi) segments of the empire, were generative of key developments of Ottoman religiosity such as novel forms of reading and writing, a culture of pilgrimage centered on the hajj, and, indeed, the bitter polemicism itself. I do this through four detailed case studies of heresy, manuscript "pamphlets," pilgrimage, and travelogues. The dissertation thus makes two contributions. The first is to integrate discussions of materiality and circulation into our understanding of the transformation of Islamic religiosity in the early modern Ottoman Empire. This is reflected not only in my analysis but also in my research method, in which the materiality of the manuscripts themselves helps me uncover unknown writers and topics and connect a myriad of unrelated works. The second contribution is to highlight how the sustained encounter, exchange, and connectivity between Rumis and Arabs became an important motor of religious and cultural change in the empire.

Religious history; Middle Eastern history; History

Subject Term

Philosophy, religion and theology;Social sciences;Book history;Circulation;Connectivity;Materiality;Ottoman;Travel

Abou-Ziab, Hoda

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay; Green, Nile

Subdivision

History

University of California, Los Angeles

Call Number

1842435696; 10161623

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y