The Transformation of Islam in the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1924

FAIN: FEL-258151-18

Baki Tezcan
Regents of the University of California, Davis (Davis, CA 95618-6153)

A book-length study of the transformation of Islam under the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1924.

This project historicizes Islam as a socio-political experience in the Ottoman Empire, ca. 1300-1924, and offers a genealogy of the secular in that experience. I show how the prevalent ways in which Islam was experienced in the public space changed over these six and a quarter centuries and argue that these changes were products of major political transformations created by social dynamics, at times of a global nature, such as the increasing monetarization of the economy and urbanization. In terms of global history, the project emphasizes the parallels between the historical experiences of Europe and the Middle East, especially in the medieval and early modern periods. From the perspective of comparative religion, it invites scholars to consider the parallels one discovers between Christianity and Islam when one thinks of the Reformation as a call to discard some of the products of medieval socio-religious experiences and rationalize the faith by going back to the scriptural sources.