History of
Ottoman Thought Meetings
Ebussuud and
His World of Thought –I
Organized by the History of
Ottoman Thought Study Group
(
Date: 31 July-
Venue: İSAM,
Araştırmacılar Binası.
Address: İSAM,
Bağlarbaşı Caddesi, No.40, Üsküdar 34662, İstanbul.
Phone:
90-216-474 0850.
E-mail: zeynepyelce@sabanciuniv.edu
It would be fair to say
that scholarship on the history of Ottoman thought, some bright examples
notwithstanding, has not kept pace with the rapid growth that the field of
Ottoman Studies has experienced in recent years. One could cite various reasons
for this situation, ranging from the Orientalist conviction that Islamic
thought hit a bottleneck at some point, certainly before the fourteenth
century, to deeply-rooted ideas in world historiography which posit that the
Ottomans disregarded intellectual life, despite their military and
administrative achievements, or judgments that almost became truisms within the
ambit of Ottoman-Turkish thought itself (e.g. the Ottomans did not notice, let
alone keep up with, the intellectual movements that started in Europe with the
onset of the Renaissance, they neglected the rational sciences, they remained
unaware of the emergence of a new world economy and of capitalism, etc.), as
well as residues of ideological blocs specific to Turkey. To these, one could
also add the long-standing prevalence of an ahistorical understanding and
criterion of originality, maintained
even among students of intellectual life, as well as a related disdain of
genres such as commentaries and annotations and of Ottoman prose in general.
For purposes of cultivating this vast and
underexplored field with systematic rigor and patience, we, as representatives
of Harvard University, ISAM and Sabancı University, have decided to come
together to launch a long-term project. The aim is to hold small workshops
followed by international conferences; subsequently the conclusions and any new
questions that arise will be published in order to reach the wide circles
interested in Ottoman, Islamic, and early modern world history.
It has been decided that the first series of
meetings (two meetings and one conference) will be devoted to Ebussuud Efendi
in view of his significance as a thinker and the richness of sources related to
him. Later, we may choose to focus on another figure who made a deep impact on
the world of ideas; or, rather than focusing on “towering figures” in the
history of thought, we may select names not so much for their “importance” but
rather for their relevance toward illuminating a particular issue
Alternatively, we may choose to deal with a definable period or milieu, an idea
or a genre, instead of/along with pursuing the history of thought through individuals.
We regard these first meetings on Ebussuud as an experiment to determine the
future course of our project, i.e. to identify the ways in which different
approaches and methods can be utilized most beneficially. In other words, the
purpose of the meetings is to develop methods and approaches to guide the
historiography of Ottoman thought as much as it is to understand this great
sixteenth-century scholar.
The deepening of our biographical and
encyclopedic knowledge on Ebussuud will no doubt be a valuable gain in itself.
However, our larger goal is to explore the relationship between a thinker and
the social, institutional and cultural context of his age, and to untangle this
web of relationships as much as possible in order to understand the thinker through
an historical perspective that extends beyond mere events. For this purpose, we
aim to tackle as many approaches and raise as many different questions as
possible in the meetings on Ebussuud. In addition to analyzing his
authoritative texts of jurisprudence and exegesis, we intend to examine, as far
as the sources allow, his relationship with literature and Sufism, with music,
with what today are called the natural sciences, as well as financial and
economic affairs, and even popular culture. We aim not only to trace the
continuities in Ebussuud’s thought spanning a relatively long lifetime, but
also to focus on transformations and ruptures – if any – in his line of
thought. We believe that while dwelling on these issues, we need to consider
some contemporaries of our thinker and make comparative observations when
necessary, turning our gaze away from the Ottoman world from time to time.
Finally, we also need to take into account the categories and criteria of the
sciences in his era, explore the settings of the exchange of knowledge and debate, such as colleges (medrese) and social gatherings (meclis),
look into forms of expression and circulation of ideas in a manuscript culture,
and –last but not least-- pay attention to the means of learning through the
experiences of everyday life and travel.
We hope that our
first meeting in
Program:
1st
Session: (Chair:
Cemal Kafadar)
The history of thought today and its contribution to the historiography
of Ottoman Thought
Paper: Cemal Kafadar, Hüseyin Yılmaz;
Discussant: Metin Kunt
How to study Ottoman intellectual life?
Paper: İhsan Fazlıoğlu; Discussant: Tahsin
Görgün
2nd Session: (Chair: Cornell Fleischer)
Ebussuud’s life and the formation of his legal thought
Paper: Murteza Bedir; Discussant: Mehmet İpşirli
The perception of knowledge, the learned and the medrese in the 16th-century Ottoman world: An assessment in terms
of the conception of education
Paper: Seyfi Kenan; Discussant: Selçuk Akşin Somel
3rd Session: (Chair:
Hülya Canbakal)
Ottoman Legal thought-I:
Fetva, maruzat
and şeriat and kanun
Paper: Şükrü Özen; Discussant: M.Âkif Aydın,
Kanun and Şeriat:
An analysis with regard to land law
Paper: Snjezana Buzov; Discussant: Martha Mundy
4th Session: (Chair:
M.Akif Aydın)
The formation of an Ottoman legal institution:
Cash waqfs and Ebussuud
Paper: Himmet Taşkömür; Discussant: Tahsin
Özcan,
Kanun
and Şeriat: An analysis with regard to penal law
Paper: Yunus Koç; Discussant: R. Peters
Concluding Review Session:
Martha Mundy, Cemal Kafadar (Chair:
Metin Kunt)
Paper Deadline:
Timing: 30 minutes for each presentation and 20 minutes for each
discussant. The presentations will take
place in both Turkish and English depending on the choice of the presenter, but
all papers will be available in English.
Papers’ Deadline: July 19, 2010.
The
List of other participants / discussants:
1. Fikret Adanır
2. Kemal Beydilli
3. Feridun Emecen
4. İsmail Erünsal
5. Nenad Filipovic
6. Fethi Gedikli
7. Mehmet Genç
8. Ahmet Karamustafa
9. Ayfer Karakaya
10. Eugenia Kermeli
11. Ahmet Yaşar Ocak
12. Abdülkadir Özcan
13. Derin Terzioğlu
14. Yunus Uğur
15. Zeynep Nevin Yelce
16. Levent Yılmaz
Advisory
Board
Metin Kunt
Gülru Neciboğlu
Cemal Kafadar
Hülya Canbakal
Seyfi Kenan
Tahsin Görgün
Murteza Bedir
Executive
Committee
Cemal Kafadar
Hülya Canbakal
Seyfi Kenan
Murteza Bedir