The Language of Religion: The Reversion of the Ezan from Turkish to Arabic (original) (raw)

Kaygusuz abdal: a Medieval TurKish sainT and The ForMaTion oF vernacular islaM in anaTolia

The archaeology of the religious lives of Turkish speakers in late medieval and early modern anatolia is in many ways still in its infancy. even though significant strides were taken in this area during the late ottoman and early republican eras, the field suffered from the unquestioned hegemony of a single paradigm during the course of the entire twentieth century, which—we can now see with the benefit of hindsight—stifled new and innovative research. This paradigm, was, of course, the one put into place by M.F. Köprülü, according to which anatolian Turkish religiosity had to be understood primarily in the light of the pre-islamic cultural history of Turks in central asia. Köprülü's approach privileged continuity over against change in the religious thought and practice of Turkish speakers both in the longue durée (from pre-islamic to islamic periods) and in geographical and cultural expanse (from central and southwest asia to ana-tolia and the balkans).1 The Köprülü paradigm was, at least initially, a step forward in at least the sense that it brought the Turkish vernacular into full view and focused the scholarly gaze squarely on Turkish speakers, but in the long run it had several unfortunate consequences, which, for those who have labored under its influence, include an inability to conceive the religious lives of vernacular speakers as dynamic, ever-changing webs spun by actual human beings who lived at the threshold of continuity and rupture, of the new and the old. speakers of Turkish (not to mention other vernaculars spoken in anatolia) were not, however, mere repositories of culture but actual architects of it, and in the half millennium long history of their islamization between the tenth and fifteenth centuries and beyond, it is their dynamism and agency, not their presumed preservation of " archaic " lifeways, that need to be explored and explained. it is high

The Application of Western Comparative Religious and Linguistic Approaches to the Qur'an in Turkey

ABSTRACT In this study, in order to deseribe fuZZy the impact of Western scholarship, we first explore the Western-oriented study of religion in Turkey. Secondly, by making special reference to the treatment of theforeign vocabulary of the Qur'iin by Turkish intellectuals, we investigate the extent of Western infiuence in the first half of the twemieth century. Thirdly, considering an institutional attempt to understand Western academia, we discuss Zeki Velidi Togan and the Institute of Islamic Studies (established in 1953). Fourthly, we examine the relationship between Western-oriented studies of religion and the classical study of Islam in Turkey, explaining the palemical nature of these studies in Turkish academic circles. The Turkish treatment of the Bible and the Turkish evaluation of the Westenı treatment of the Qur'aı: will provide case studies. The last part of the work discusses recent developments in Turkish sekalarship dealing with the application of modern eritic al and linguistic nıethods ıo the. Qur'iin.