Conjunctions of Islam: rethinking the geographies of art and piety through the notebooks of Ahmet Süheyl Ünver

Abstract

How should we understand the relationship between artistic practice and religious devotion? This paper answers that question through a close engagement with the archive of the artist, teacher, doctor, and writer Ahmet Süheyl Ünver (b. 1898–d. 1986). Working from notebooks and archival files produced about Eyüp, Istanbul’s most important Muslim district, I offer the concept of ‘conjunctions of Islam’ to develop two linked arguments. First, Ünver’s work challenges essentialist invocations of ‘Turkish’ or ‘Islamic’ art. Instead, his work shows us how these terms are historically and geographically specific, embedded within networks of people, places, objects, and histories. Second, Ünver also shows us how definitions of Muslim identity trace geographies other than the territorial nation. Indebted to discussions of relational place-making and topology, my use of conjunction helps us see the making of an urban Muslim self in a new way. In doing so, this article extends recent cultural geographic discussions about skill and creativity, provides a new perspective on the geographies of Islam, and enriches our ability to explain how complex forms of the past are articulated in contemporary Turkey.

Geographical approaches to religion in the past

“…For example, Abigail Gomulkiewicz (2020) used small household items to explore the spread of Protestant ideas during the Reformation and positioned theological change within the everyday context of individuals' homes. While, Timur Hammond (2022) used Ahmet Süheyl Ünver's written and visual reflections on twentieth‐century Istanbul to explore how Ünver's Islamic identity intersected with contemporary social, cultural, and political change, to shape his shifting experiences of urban space and its built environments. These approaches have moved beyond explorations of the relationships between institutionalised religion and space and rejected explorations of the distinctions between sacred and secular space.…”

“…Although demonstrating how geographical approaches to religion in the past can make significant contributions to broader historical geographies, these approaches have largely used representations to understand religious knowledge and theology. In contrast, Veronica Della Dora (2011), Timur Hammond (2022), and myself (Slatter, 2023) have focused on the affect of making and engaging with these representations. Considering representations of Mount Athos on Russian prayer cards, Della Dora (2011) argued that by engaging with these representations pilgrims relived the spiritual experiences they had while visiting Mount Athos and those unable to travel were transported to the mountain and its spiritual atmosphere.…”

Hasan Hanafi’s Perspective Soul Theory

“…This city is a meeting place for Muslim students from various parts of the world who want to study, especially at Al-Azhar University (Hasan, 2019). Hasan Hanafi became a philosopher and theologian in Egypt who earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy at Cairo University in 1956 (Hammond, 2022). Viewed culturally, Egypt is a meeting place for the world's great civilizations.…”

Languages of din: Place, history, and paths

“…The young man reflected on his peers’ misguided enthusiasms – ‘if they have a spiritual condition ( halet-i rûhiyye ), it's that they don’t know what it is to love and be loved’ – and wrote of a renewed commitment to Islam: ‘I [now] see the world of Islam's beautiful traditions ( İslâm âleminin güzel adetlerini ) more truly and I [will] spend my love only for them’ (transcribed in Erçetin, 2018: 37). Ahmet Süheyl Ünver would go on to become one of 20th century Istanbul's most important cultural historians and masters of the ‘traditional’ Turkish and Islamic arts (Hammond, 2022; Sayar, 1994). As I was reading James Sidaway's (2023) article, ‘Beyond the Decolonial: Critical Muslim Geographies’, I returned to Ünver.…”