Ottoman Ulema Turkish Republic

To better understand the diverse inheritance of Islamic movements in present-day Turkey, we must take a closer look at the religious establishment, the ulema, during the first half of the twentieth century. During the closing years of the Ottoman Empire and the early decades of the Republic of Turkey, the spread of secularist and anti-religious ideas had a major impact on the views and political leanings of the ulema. This book explores the intellectual debates and political movements of the religious establishment during this time. Bein reveals how competing visions of development influenced debates about reforms in religious education and the modernization of the medreses. He also explores the reactions and changing attitudes of Islamic intellectuals to the religious policies of the secular republic, and provides a better understanding of the changes in the relationship between religion and state. Exposing division within the religious establishment, this book illuminates the ulema's long-lasting legacies still in evidence in Turkey today.

This book explores the intellectual debates and political movements of the religious establishment during the first half of the 20th century.

The influence of the ulema, the official Sunni Muslim religious scholars of the Ottoman Empire, is commonly understood to have waned in the empire's last century. Drawing upon Ottoman state archives and the institutional archives of the ulema, this study challenges this narrative, showing that the ulema underwent a process of professionalisation as part of the wider Tanzimat reforms and thereby continued to play an important role in Ottoman society. First outlining transformations in the office of the Sheikh ul-islam, the leading Ottoman Sunni Muslim cleric, the book goes on to use the archives to present a detailed portrait of the lives of individual ulema, charting their education and professional and social lives. It also includes a glossary of Turkish-Arabic vocabulary for increased clarity. Contrary to beliefs about their decline, the book shows they played a central role in the empire's efforts to centralise the state by acting as intermediaries between the government and social groups, particularly on the empire's peripheries.

First Published in 1956 A History of Turkey presents a comprehensive overview of Turkey’s journey from empire to republic. The book attempts to give a picture of the growth of the Turkish people, the institutions they have created and the ideas that have inspired them through the centuries. It discusses themes like how Islamic civilization came to the Middle East; the rise and decline of the Ottoman Empire; the National Revolution and birth of new Turkey; Mustafa Kemal and national consolidation; labour conditions, social security, and religion in new Turkey. A humble contribution to Anglo-Turkish understanding, this book is an interesting read for scholars and researchers of Turkish history, modern European history, Middle East studies, and history in general.

Islamist Thinkers in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic offers an overview of the lives and ideas of thirteen influential Islamist thinkers. In the aftermath of the 1908 Revolution, Islamism became a prominent political ideology. In their writings, Islamist intellectuals analyzed and sought solutions to the social, economic and political issues of the empire. Their ideas constitute the blueprint for the Islamist-oriented political movements and parties that have been present in Turkish political life since the 1950s. This book is an important contribution to the study of late Ottoman intellectual history and the field of Islamic/Turkish political studies. It makes available in English important primary sources to scholars and students who have no access to these materials in their original languages.

The Qur’an between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic is one of the few book-length studies on an Ottoman Qur’an commentary. Its premise is that "the Ottoman Empire" did not come to an end until 1950 so far as Islam was concerned in Turkey. The work explores the relationship between Elmalılı’s Qur’an commentary and the intellectual trends of the period, including the impact of materialism, the sciences, notions of civilizational progress, and philosophy. In doing so, this study emphasizes the "local" aspect of the Qur’an commentary, through a sustained focus on the Istanbul context in which it was written. This work demonstrates that Elmalılı’s Qur’an commentary is a product of and reaction to the religious, intellectual, political, and social trends of the period. This work, in considering all the factors that led to the commissioning of Elmalılı’s Qur’an commentary, also contributes to our understanding of the history of Islam in early to mid-twentieth-century Turkey. This intellectual history of modern Islamic thought contributes to our understanding of the genre of Qur’an commentary in the early twentieth century. It is a key text for students and scholars interested in Islam in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, modern Islamic thought, and the Middle East.