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The Center for Middle Eastern Studies presents
Hasan Hüseyin Güneş
Associate Professor of Ottoman History, Department of History, University of Bartın
This talk will focus on rāfiḍī refutations in the Ottoman Empire. Conflict and polemics between Sunni Muslims and Shiites have a long history. In the contemporary era, this polemic has been accentuated by the conflictual situation in the Middle East, and it is also coloring the minority Muslim situation. In this context, my presentation concerns the refutations written by Ottoman scholars related to ‘othering/stamping’, taking as its focus an analysis of their works. The refutations genre consists of original manuscripts in which political instrumentalization can be examined and are written to non-Sunni sects in Islamic history, forming a large literature, and taking shape typically by being written in the context of the rāfiḍī concept. The projections of this genre of literature in the Ottomans, which became almost a tradition, are substantial and have rhetoric and methods that are not available in various archive resources related to the Qizilbash community. Most of the refutations are written extensively in Arabic and to a limited extent in Ottoman Turkish with great support of the Safavid Sunni ulama that took shelter in the Ottoman Empire as well as the Arabian and Kurdish ulama.
Contact: Liz Flanagan