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Rethinking Sufism and Imperial Politics in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

IFEA

Intervention en anglais
The session will be moderated by Denis Hermann (IFEA) and Yavuz Aykan Université Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne)

 

This paper investigates how Sufis conceptualized Ottoman imperial politics and their place in it from the reign of Murad III (1574-1595) until the end of the reign of Ahmed III (1703-1730). In this period, Ottoman state institutions and state-society relations underwent significant changes, resulting ultimately in a new imperial arrangement in which power was dispersed between a greater number of players than before. In this altered social and political landscape, Islamic law became an even more important arbiter of legitimacy than previously, reshaping the Ottoman discourses on rulership as well as the boundaries of acceptable forms of Sufism. But, did these changes also spell the end of imperial mysticism?

This paper will try to answer this question by drawing on Sufi texts from a variety of genres (works of political advice, hagiographies, letters, diaries, etc.) written between the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries. 

Légende de l'illustration: Tezakir-i Hüdayi, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Fatih MS. 2572