Spiritual Subjects: Central Asian Pilgrims and the Ottoman Hajj at the End of Empire, By Lâle Can

Compulsory guesthood, social cohesion, and the politics of hospitality in Turkey

“…Historians Selim Deringil (2003) and Ussama Makdisi (2002) detail the nineteenth‐century Ottoman civilizing mission towards ‘Arab and Kurdish tribal people’, with the latter noting how ‘a long tradition of imperial paternalism [gave] way to genteel racism’ (Makdisi 2002: 793) 21. Similar to ‘the West’ invoked in Süleyman Soylu's speech, anxieties over the encroachment of European imperialism during the Hamidian era paved the way for colonialist, protectionist practices towards the Muslim umma (Can 2020), who were simultaneously racialized. In the early Republican period, Ottoman imperial paternalism transformed into an ethno‐nationalist project where minority populations were either expelled or forced to assimilate.…”

“…3 In the late Ottoman and early Republican periods, muhacir was used to refer to permanent Muslim migrants/refugees from European areas of the Empire heading towards the Ottoman provinces of Asia (Karpat 1990). Although in the Ottoman period the muhacirin were distinguished from the mücavirin (long-term pious residents of holy cities who came for pilgrimage and stayed afterwards), the latter's liminal position still charged the Sultan with a duty to protect (Can 2020).…”

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

“…33 Elsewhere, the Islamic studies scholar Shahab Ahmed offers the 'complex' as an alternative to the monolithic category of 'Islamic civilization', 34 and the historian Lâle Can shows us how hajj pilgrims' 'spiritual subjecthood' enacted geographies that transcended empires, nations, and regions. 35 These revisions have largely stayed separate from debates within geography. This is unfortunate, as they share a common desire to theorize the where of Islam differently.…”