Project Details
Projekt
Inner-Islamic Transfer of Knowledge in the Ottoman Empire: on Translations of Works of Islamic Mysticism within Transregional Sufi Networks in the Anatolian and Arab Provinces
Applicant
Professor Dr. Philip Bockholt
Subject Area
Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
Modern and Contemporary History
Modern and Contemporary History
Term
since 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 446487824
The research project “Inner-Islamic Transfer of Knowledge in the Ottoman Empire: on Translations of Works of Islamic Mysticism within Transregional Sufi Networks in the Anatolian and Arab Provinces,” is to be conducted within the framework of the DFG Priority Programme 1981 “Transottomanica: Osteuropäisch-osmanisch-persische Mobilitätsdynamiken.” It seeks to analyze processes of translation and adaption of works of Islamic mysticism written in the languages Persian, Arabic, and Turkish, which took place in various (border) regions of the Ottoman Empire during the 16th to 18th centuries. The focus of this project will be on the socio-cultural background of these processes, that is, the conditions underlying the selection, imitation, adaptation, transmission and reception of texts. The project will apply current approaches developed in the fields of material philology and translation studies in order to examine textual, paratextual, codicological, and visual aspects of manuscripts as well as the background of the translaters themselves. The analysis of the selected source material will allow insights into the socio-political fabric of Ottoman scholarly culture and book culture as well as networks of Sufi brotherhoods in the capital Istanbul and across the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire and its borderlands with Iran. Thereby it will be possible to illuminate from a transregional perspective how actors coming from different cultural milieus adapted norms and representations to objects in a particular context.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
