The Qāḍīzādeli Movement and the Spread of Islamic Revivalism in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire: Preliminary Notes
The Qāḍīzādeli Movement and the Spread of Islamic Revivalism in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire: Preliminary Notes

Summary/Abstract: As an offshoot of an evolving study on Islamic revivalism in the post-classical period (1258–1798) this working paper signals some key issues and research trajectories in Islamic religious history during the seventeenth- and eighteenth- century Ottoman Empire. Rooted in the previous period, but also projected onto later modern times, some of these ideas and practices shaped and reshaped Islam in the territories under Ottoman domination. Foregrounding the under-researched ideas and practices advocated by the violently puritan Qāḍīzādeli movement (1620s–1680s), this paper draws some parallels between the Qāḍīzādeli type of religious revivalism and orthodoxy kindled by Sheikh Muḥammad ibn ʽAbd al-Wahhāb (1703–1792) and other Middle Eastern religious scholars (ʽulamāʼ) and leaders. As part of a larger ongoing research project, the draft analysis here unfolds as an argument around the concepts and approaches applied to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Islamic revivalism. The notion of “orthodoxy” in the study of Islam is examined against the backdrop of “revivalism” by foregrounding its “restorationist” dimensions to suggest a nuanced insight into the grasp of the major seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Sunnī movements. Focusing primarily on the intra-communal Muslim religious interplay between the imperial center of Istanbul and the Ottoman Arab lands, this study adds a comparative consideration to connect them with the Balkans. Seeking to further understand the key trajectories of the highly complex “fundamentalist spirit” allegedly spanning the Ottoman universe in these two centuries, the paper participates in the debates on the typology of Islamic revivalist movements.

• Details
• Contents