PISC no. 3: “A View from the Province: An 18th-century Ottoman’s Reckoning with Science and Religion”

The Princeton Islamic Studies Colloquium is a forum for workshopping students’ and guest scholars’ works-in-progress in Islamic Studies and related fields.

Abstract: Focusing on Ibrâhîm Hakkı Erzurumlu’s (d. 1780) Marifetnâme, this paper charts one episode in 18th-century Ottoman reception of “new knowledge” in the province of Erzurum. While religious and social controversies generated by the introduction of new commodities, such as tobacco and drugs, from the mid-17th century onwards have received scholarly attention, we know much less about how new systems of knowing were received in the Ottoman world. By paying attention to the discussion of “new knowledge,” specifically, “new astronomy”, in Marifetnâme, this paper highlights the ways in which unfamiliar, new knowledge was integrated into existing temporal, intellectual and epistemological frameworks. On the surface of it, as the work includes a wide range of subjects, it appears that the author was merely performing a neutral, thoughtless act of copying, gathering and arranging information into one text. Yet, a closer examination of the ways in which these various sources of available information are gathered, ordered and eventually made sense of shows Hakkı was concerned with the attainment of spiritual perfection as a Sufi, the authority of past, established knowledge and the boundaries of religion.

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Presented by the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Near Eastern Studies Program. Co-sponsored by the Humanities Council, the Center for Culture, Society, and Religion, and the Department of Religion.