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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO Additional services for Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here B. Deniz Çaliş-Kural: Şehrengiz: Urban Rituals and Deviant Su Mysticism in Ottoman İstanbul. xiii, 276 pp. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. £65. ISBN 978 1 4724 2709 0. Selim S. Kuru Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 79 / Issue 01 / February 2016, pp 190 - 192 DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X15001196, Published online: 07 March 2016 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X15001196 How to cite this article: Selim S. Kuru (2016). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 79, pp 190-192 doi:10.1017/S0041977X15001196 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO, IP address: 128.95.104.109 on 03 Jun 2016 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 03 Jun 2016 IP address: 128.95.104.109 les ateliers français de ces savoir-faire orientaux se heurtait à de multiples difficultés. Il aura ainsi fallu près d’un siècle pour maîtriser la production de sel ammoniac, alors quasi-monopole égyptien. De tels constats remettent fondamentalement en question l’idée d’un déclin de l’artisanat en Orient avant le XIXe siècle, tout comme les théories de centres développés, diffuseurs de savoirs, et de zones périphériques fournissant des matières premières et disposant d’une main d’œuvre illettrée non qualifiée. A partir de quelques exemples d’adaptation de méthodes traditionnelles dans des pratiques scientifiques modernes, N.H. élargit le débat à la nature même des savoirs, aux inter- actions entre artisans et savants, à l’empirique et au théorique, au local et à l’universel. Ce bref compte rendu ne peut fournir qu’un aperçu très sommaire de cet essai très dense et très solidement argumenté. Il ne concerne pas seulement les spécialistes de l’Egypte moderne ou de l’Empire ottoman, mais aussi ceux qui s’interrogent sur les fondements mêmes de notre monde moderne globalisé et connecté. Michel Tuchscherer Professeur Émérite, Aix-Marseille Université B. DENIZ ÇALIŞ-KURAL: Şehrengiz: Urban Rituals and Deviant Sufi Mysticism in Ottoman İstanbul. xiii, 276 pp. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. £65. ISBN 978 1 4724 2709 0. doi:10.1017/S0041977X15001196 While interdisciplinary work is already rare in Ottoman studies, the relationship of literary production and literary networks to Ottoman social, political, religious and artistic history is overwhelmingly neglected. In this sense Urban Rituals is a novel contribution. It is based on the author’s 2004 dissertation. Employing scholarship from three distinct fields of study: religious, literary and art history, the work argues that “melâmî ideals” were at the heart of certain “urban rituals” that took place in gardens and were manifested in a genre of poetry, namely şehrengiz. In six chapters Çalış-Kural takes up a number of topics from the influence of the thirteenth-century sheikh Ibn al-Arabi on Anatolian Sufism to garden imagery in sehrengiz poems, to book paintings, to Ottoman landscape architecture. The book includes black and white illustrations as well as reconstructions showing the organ- izational principles behind visual depictions of gardens. The many spelling mistakes show that the book did not benefit from a thorough editing process. More impor- tantly, it suffers from many methodological flaws and factual errors. In this review, I focus only on the use of evidence from literary works. Çalış-Kural structures the book around a series of bold arguments: the Tulip Period was the climax rather than a starting point of modernization; the roots of the “development of self-consciousness and individuality” are found in the early six- teenth century; a streak of classical Turkish poetry functioned as a device through which poets with links to “heterodox” Sufi orders expressed liberating discourses against the Orthodoxy in the “Islamic” Ottoman state. Çalış-Kural establishes her argument in the distinction between state-sponsored gardens, and those frequented by Sufis; the former as sites of social control and the latter “open spaces for the lib- eration of individuals” (p. 1). According to this argument, during the 1720s, differ- ent social groups started to frequent state-sponsored gardens, challenging the 190 R E V I E W S http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 03 Jun 2016 IP address: 128.95.104.109 “hierarchy of the classical Ottoman cosmology”, described as an order that gives form to concepts of exclusion and inclusion. On the first page, the author states that “some marginal groups in the Sufi tradition asserted the importance of gardens as a source of inquiry for divine knowledge. Instead of using gardens as a symbol of the religion or the monarchy, they challenged the use of gardens” (p. 1). The author’s unspecified use of terminology and theoretical categories weakens the main argument of the book. The most important example of this is the focus of the study: “Melâmî”. It appears as a separate sect in sentences such as, “Melâmîs rejected zikr” (p. 54); “Melâmî thought openly entered the city of Istanbul. . .” (p. 55), and “Melâmîs valued each human being as a beloved reflection of God” (p. 232). It is very difficult to comprehend if the author relies on an abstraction as “melâmî-mindedness”, or commenting on historically defined particular practices. The ingrained nature of some practices and ideas categorized as melâmîan in Ottoman state formation is totally neglected for the sake of the argument, as the pos- sibility of “monarchy” searching for divine knowledge is not considered at all, even though mystical tendencies of particular sultans, and their complex relationship with various Sufi sects, are attested by scholarship. One of the major problems is that this book refers to few titles dated after 2000. The neglect of recent scholarship in Ottoman studies makes it sound dated and weakens its argument. For example, an annotated bibliographical study of scholarly work on the şehrengiz texts challenges the author, who complains about lack of work in the genre (Barış Karacasu, “Türk Edebiyatında Şehrengîzler”, Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatür Dergisi, 2007, 259–313). It is also necessary to consult Mesihi’s original work in the edition of his divan, rather than selections quoted in a secondary source (pp. 108–114) (Mesîhî Dîvânı, ed. Mine Mengi. Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, 1995). There are also flawed descriptions, leading readers to question the attention of the author to the sources and secondary literature: gâzîs were not Anatolian Türkmens (pp. 43 ff.), most of them were converts. Hamzaname is not about a “holy horse belonging first to Muhammed’s [sic.] uncle” but adventures of Prophet Muhammed’s uncle Hamza (p. 44). In her discussion of eleven şehrengiz texts, the author, referring to common tropes and similes of Islamicate literary tradition, argues that this imagery reflects the contemporary melâmî tendencies. However, linking şehrengiz texts and poets to deviant religious orders due to imagery is erroneous since (1) this imagery gov- erned all other forms of literature, not only şehrengiz, and (2) all poets, including sultans and religious leaders, used the same imagery for centuries. While it is interesting to argue that these poets “performed” şehrengiz texts in solidarity with guilds, there is no evidence whatsoever for this. The author claims that one of the beauties cited by Mesihi in 1512 as a beautiful boy of Edirne was Hacı Bayram Veli, who had died in 1429 (p. 112): it is odd for a saint who died a century earlier to appear in a list of beautiful boys of Edirne. The author similarly identifies a boy named in Katib’s şehrengiz dated 1513 as Sarban Ahmed, a Bayrami poet who died in 1545 (pp. 116–7) without any evidence. The section on şehrengiz would definitely be improved through closer reading and investigation of the manuscript evidence, and inquiry in a wealth of scholarship on guilds. Many more şehrengiz texts have been edited and there has been an ongoing discussion of these city panegyrics that centred on the beautiful boys in the market place in Persian and Turkish literary traditions. Perhaps its major shortcoming is the book’s uncritical reliance on binary opposi- tions, such as “Ottoman”/”melami”, Orthodox/Heterodox, Novelty/Traditional etc. In its current state it brings together evidence from different fields of study; R E V I E W S 191 http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 03 Jun 2016 IP address: 128.95.104.109 however, the methodological and factual shortcomings make it difficult to follow, and the arguments difficult to accept, especially in the context of innovative recent work within Ottoman studies. Selim S. Kuru University of Washington S O U T H A S I A LARS FOGELIN: An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism. xii, 250 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. ISBN 978 0 19 994823 9. doi:10.1017/S0041977X15001202 This ambitious book promises much: a new understanding of the development of Indian Buddhism, repositioning the role of archaeology in that study, and develop- ing the theoretical approach to the archaeology of religion. In pursuing these aims, it is both more and less than an “archaeological history of Indian Buddhism”. More, because it engages with the art historical and textual sources far beyond the level they are usually considered by archaeologists of South Asia, provides a genuinely new explanation of religious change within Indian Buddhism, and delivers a wel- come injection of archaeological theory. Yet less, because it is far from comprehen- sive and prone to generalizations. The uploads/Philosophie/ b-deniz-calis-kural-sehrengiz-urban-rit.pdf