The Kizilbash-Alevis in Ottoman Anatolia: Sufism, Politics and Community

Description

Winner of the 2020 SERMEISS Book Award for outstanding scholarship in Middle Eastern/Islamic StudiesExplores the transformation of the Kizilbash from a radical religio-political movement to a religious order of closed communitiesThe first comprehensive social history of the Kizilbash/Alevi communitiesCombines conventional sources with newly discovered ones generated within the Kizilbash-Alevi milieuArgues for a readjustment in focus from pre-Islamic Central Asia to the cosmopolitan Sufi milieu of the Middle East when exploring genealogies of popular Islam in AnatoliaOffers a critical assessment of the long-standing Köprülü paradigm in the field of religious and cultural history of AnatoliaProvides a new perspective on the Ottoman-Safavid conflict, and on Sunni-Shiʿi confessionalisation in the early modern periodOpens new avenues of research in the study of other ‘heterodox’ communities in the Islamic worldThe Kizilbash were at once key players in and the foremost victims of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict that defined the early modern Middle East. Today referred to as Alevis, they constitute the second largest faith community in modern Turkey, with smaller pockets of related groups in the Balkans. Yet several aspects of their history remain little understood or explored. This first comprehensive socio-political history of the Kizilbash/Alevi communities uses a recently surfaced corpus of sources generated within their milieu. It offers fresh answers to many questions concerning their origins and evolution from a revolutionary movement to an inward-looking religious order.