Ayfer Karakaya-Stump
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474432689
- eISBN:
- 9781474476799
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474432689.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
The Kizilbash were at once key players in and the foremost victims of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict that defined the early modern Middle East today. Today referred to as Alevis, they constitute the ...
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The Kizilbash were at once key players in and the foremost victims of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict that defined the early modern Middle East today. Today referred to as Alevis, they constitute the second largest faith community in modern Turkey, making up around fifteen percent of the country’s population, with smaller pockets of related groups in the Balkans. Historians have typically treated Kizilbashism/Alevism as an undifferentiated strain within the hazy category of “heterodox folk Islam.” Several aspects of their history therefore remain little understood or explored. This first comprehensive socio-political history of the Kizilbash/Alevi communities uses a recently surfaced corpus of sources generated within their milieu. It offers fresh answers to many questions concerning their origins and evolution from a revolutionary movement to an inward-looking religious order. Among other things, it argues for a readjustment in focus from pre-Islamic Central Asia to the cosmopolitan Sufi milieu of the Middle East when exploring genealogies of popular Islam in Anatolia, and of Kizilbashism-Alevism, in particular. While the Kizilbash constitute the focus of the book, its findings may open new avenues of research in the study of other “heterodox” communities in the Islamic world by alerting historians to the potential of Sufism to provide a basis for social order and give rise to distinct communities.Less
The Kizilbash were at once key players in and the foremost victims of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict that defined the early modern Middle East today. Today referred to as Alevis, they constitute the second largest faith community in modern Turkey, making up around fifteen percent of the country’s population, with smaller pockets of related groups in the Balkans. Historians have typically treated Kizilbashism/Alevism as an undifferentiated strain within the hazy category of “heterodox folk Islam.” Several aspects of their history therefore remain little understood or explored. This first comprehensive socio-political history of the Kizilbash/Alevi communities uses a recently surfaced corpus of sources generated within their milieu. It offers fresh answers to many questions concerning their origins and evolution from a revolutionary movement to an inward-looking religious order. Among other things, it argues for a readjustment in focus from pre-Islamic Central Asia to the cosmopolitan Sufi milieu of the Middle East when exploring genealogies of popular Islam in Anatolia, and of Kizilbashism-Alevism, in particular. While the Kizilbash constitute the focus of the book, its findings may open new avenues of research in the study of other “heterodox” communities in the Islamic world by alerting historians to the potential of Sufism to provide a basis for social order and give rise to distinct communities.
Reflections on the Astronomy of Glasgow
The Edinburgh Festivals
Lost in the Backwoods
An Alternative Internet
American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film
American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century
Contemporary Arab Broadcast Media
Islam and the Prayer Economy
