Sufism from Empire to Republic
February 23-24, 2023
Central European University
Vienna
The workshop will explore legacies, trajectories, and transformations of Sufi traditions in the Turkish Republic following the legal prohibition of Sufi orders by the state. The goal of the workshop is to bring together scholars who work on various aspects of the topic including ritual, museumization, tekkes, architecture, intellectual developments, institutional transformations, national religion, visual arts, literature, and culture, broadly conceived. One of the main motivations for this event is to try to gain a better perspective on what we know and do not know about Sufi lodges, orders, institutions, rituals and ideas in the late Ottoman/republican period. What continued, what transformed, what disappeared, what was invented, re-invented or revived?
Workshop program
FEBRUARY 23
Room: A420
13.30-13.35: Welcome
13.35-14.35: Roundtable I: discussion on the state of the field
14.35-14.55: Coffee break
14.55-15.35:
Deniz Ali Gür (Leipzig University)
Ahmed Rıfkı (1884-1935): A Late Ottoman Bektashi Agent of Cultural Transfer
15.35-16.15:
Mark Soileau (Lund University)
Hidden Visibility: Bektashis and Their Stuff in the Early Republic
16.15-16.35: Coffee break
16.35-17.15:
Cathlene Dollar (University of Cape Town)
Smashing the “Idols”: The Tijani Destruction of Turkish Republican Icons
17.15-17.55:
Lucía Cirianni Salazar (Berlin Graduate Muslim Cultures and Societies)
Heterothenticity: A Levinasian approach to the problem of change in Sufi history (Online talk)
18.30: Dinner
FEBRUARY 24
Room: C322
10.00-10.40:
Brett Wilson (CEU)
Reflections on Sufism, Secularism, and National Culture
10.40-11.20:
Dilek Sarmis (University of Strasbourg)
Taking up the Challenge of Religious Reformism in Early Republican Turkey with Sufism: The Academicization of Tasavvuf in the First Faculty of Theology (1924-1933)
11.20-11.35: Coffee break
11.35-12.15:
Gökçen Beyinli (Hamburg University)
Intersection of ‘Popular' Religion and Sufism during the Republic: Hacı Bayram Veli and His Shrine in Ankara
12.15-12.55:
Burcu Sağlam Sarıkaya (Marmara University/Istinye University)
Accommodating Modernity and Sufism: Transformation of the Sheikh-Dervish Relationship in Contemporary Turkey (Online talk)
12.55-14.55: Lunch break
14.55-15.35:
Yusuf Selman İnanç (CEU)
Reinvention of Naqshbandiyya: Politics of Sufism in Early Republican Era in Turkey
15.35-16.20: Roundtable II: Concluding discussion
18.00: Dinner