Beyond the limits of knowledge in early modern Ottoman culture
From the 14th to early 20th centuries, the Ottoman Empire extended to much of South-East Europe, West Asia and North Africa. Between the early 16th and early 18th centuries, it also encompassed parts of southeastern Central Europe. Despite its significant legacy, according to Marinos Sariyannis, from the Institute for Mediterranean Studies in Greece, Ottoman cultural history is a relatively new field. “Only in the late 20th century did historians begin to tackle issues of culture, principally looking at scientific and religious developments,” says Sariyannis, project coordinator of the GHOST project, which was funded by the European Research Council. Inspired by folklore, GHOST investigated how different Ottoman social and cultural groups related to the ‘supernatural/preternatural’ and ‘irrational’, to reveal changing social dynamics over time. “My interest started with a couple of vampire cases found in Ottoman archives, which inspired me to research how a religious culture coped with traditions ostensibly in conflict with the notion of vampires,” explains Sariyannis.
Semantic shifts in the interpretation of phenomena
Sariyannis was especially interested in the degree to which ‘enlightenment’ or ‘disenchantment’ paradigms (both prominent in Western European histography), were applicable to the Ottomans; in part guided by the debate as to whether there had been an equivalent ‘Islamic enlightenment’ or indeed a ‘scientific revolution’. “Answering this would help integrate Ottoman intellectual history into the broader Western European early modern cultural history,” notes Sariyannis. GHOST traced the social background of various Ottoman Sufi orders, looking especially for a shift in the explanation for various phenomena, after the mid 17th century. Looking at the notion of ‘magic’, Sariyannis found that on the one hand, the prevalent notions of magic transformed significantly, similar to the history of Christian magic. Earlier emphasis on jinn and their conjuring (demonic or ritual magic) gave way to an effort to manipulate the secret links believed to exist between stars, minerals, plants, etc. (natural or astral magic). This is especially notable in ‘letter magic’, a kind of Islamic cabbala connecting Arabic letters with the structure of the universe and applied through talismans. On the other hand, signs of a partial ‘disenchantment’ after the mid 17th century were discovered, when a more rationalistic world view, stressing human agency rather than fate or supernatural forces, took hold. Surprisingly, and somewhat paradoxically, Sariyannis argues this shift co-existed with legalist, or ‘fundamentalist’, movements. These sought to remove from everyday life the miraculous and wondrous elements of their opponents, the sheikhs of some dervish fraternities. “We need to unravel the layers of knowledge, ethnoreligious and linguistic interdependencies to understand why. Were these more rationalist interpretations the cause or symptom, of a more general shift, perhaps due to socio-economic transformations?” asks Sariyannis.
Links of early modern Muslim and Western European societies
GHOST adds to scholarship highlighting the similarities and differences of an early modern (predominantly) Muslim society, vis-à-vis its Western European peers, based on internal social dynamics rather than patterns of cultural transfer or influence. This required Sariyannis to research a wide variety of sources, including: scrapbooks, recipes, travelogues, biographies, elaborate treatises on magic, astrology and so on, folk stories and scientific accounts, from the late 14th to the early 19th centuries. A web portal containing bibliographies, a database of Ottoman works, project publications and interesting links is now publicly available, including an open access journal. Additionally, two monographs have been produced: one on the literature of miracles in the 13th-15th centuries, the other reflecting the entirety of the project (to be published in 2025). “One very pleasing result is that demand for Turkish translations of our output is strong, reflecting an interest in Ottoman cultural history in Turkey,” remarks Sariyannis.
Keywords
GHOST, jinn, Ottoman, supernatural, magic, enlightenment, disenchantment, Islamic, Sufi
