(Un)civilized Religion: Representations of Religious ‘Others’ in Early Arabic Periodicals in Ottoman Syria

• Magout, Mohammad ^[1]
  1. [1] Freie Universität Berlin Berlin Germany
• Localización: Oriente Moderno, ISSN 0030-5472, Vol. 105, Nº. 1-2, 2025, págs. 70-96
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.1163/22138617-12340362
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo  1    2 (pdf) 
• Resumen

  • This article explores how early Arabic periodicals in Ottoman Syria represented local, “heretical” communities; namely, Druze, Ismailis, Alawites, and Yazidis. The article shows how these representations reflected the urban ideology of the Sunni-Christian nahḍa public that identified itself as part of the civilized world in opposition to the countryside, which was otherized as alien, morally deviant, and irrational. The article traces the sources of these representations in popular prejudice against rural communities, Ḫaldūnian theory of conflict, and European as well as Ottoman Orientalisms. These depictions are then contextualized within broader discussions in the nahḍa about civilization and religious tolerance.

• Referencias bibliográficas
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  • Antic, Oxana. “The Spread of Modern Cults in the USSR”. In: Religious Policy in the Soviet Union. Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.). Cambridge, Cambridge...
  • Ayalon, Ami. The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History. New York, Oxford University Press, 1995.
  • Ayalon, Ami. “The Syrian Educated Elite and the Literary Nahda”. In: Ottoman Reform and Muslim Regeneration: Studies in Honour of Butrus Abu-Manneh....
  • Ayalon, Ami. The Arabic Print Revolution: Cultural Production and Mass Readership. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
  • Balph, James McKinnis. Fifty Years of Mission Work in Syria. Pittsburgh, Press of Murdoch Kerr & Co., 1913.
  • Daftary, Farhad. The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismaʿilis. London, I.B. Tauris, 1995.
  • Deringil, Selim. “‘They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery’: The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate”. Comparative Studies...
  • Glaß, Dagmar. Der Muqtaṭaf und seine Öffentlichkeit: Aufklärung, Räsonnement und Meinungsstreit in der frühen arabischen Zeitschriftenkommunikation....
  • Gölbaşı, Edip. “Turning the ‘Heretics’ into Loyal Muslim Subjects: Imperial Anxieties, the Politics of Religious Conversion, and the Yezidis...
  • Grehan, James. Twilight of the Saints: Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014.
  • Hanssen, Jens. Fin De Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005.
  • Hill, Peter. Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019.
  • Holt, Elizabeth M. “Narrative and the Reading Public in 1870s Beirut”. Journal of Arabic Literature, 1 (2009), p. 37-70.
  • Hourani, Albert. “Ideologies of the Mountain and the City”. In: Essays on the Crisis in Lebanon. Roger Owen (ed.). London, Ithaca Press, 1976,...
  • Kendall, Elisabeth. “Between Politics and Literature: Journals in Alexandria and Istanbul at the End of the Nineteenth Century”. In: Modernity...
  • Khuri-Makdisi, Ilham. “The Conceptualization of the Social in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Arabic Thought and Language”. In:...
  • Kreyenbroek, Philip G. “Yazīdī”. In: EI².
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  • Magout, Mohammad. “Salīm Al-Bustānī: On the Constitution (1877)”. In: Global Secularity: A Sourcebook, II, The Middle East and North Africa....
  • Makdisi, Ussama. The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon. Berkeley, University...
  • Makdisi, Ussama. “Ottoman Orientalism”. The American Historical Review, 3 (2002), p. 768-796.
  • Makdisi, Ussama. Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World. Oakland, University of California Press,...
  • Merali, Amaan. “Ismaʿili-Ottoman Petitioners in the Second Constitutional Period”. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle...
  • Pietruschka, Ute. “Bedouin”. In: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (ed.). Leiden-Boston-Köln, Brill, I, 2001, p. 214-218.
  • Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York, Vintage Books, 1979.
  • Schäbler, Birgit. “State(s) Power and the Druzes: Integration and the Struggle for Social Control (1838-1949)”. In: The Syrian Land: Processes...
  • Schäbler, Birgit. “Civilizing Others: Global Modernity and the Local Boundaries (French, German, Ottoman, and Arab) Of Savagery”. In: Globalization...
  • Şiviloğlu, Murat R. The Emergence of Public Opinion: State and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,...
  • Ṭarrāzī, Fīlīp dī. Tārīḫ al-Ṣiḥāfa al-ʿarabiyya. Beirut, al-Maṭbaʿa al-Adabiyya, 1913.
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  • Abū Ǧamra, Saʿīd. “al-Fawḍawiyyūn fī al-islām: Ṭāʾifat al-Ḥaššāšīn”. al-Hilāl, 3 (1901), p. 83-86.
  • Anon. “Ismāʿīliyya”. Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif, III (1878), p. 627-637.
  • Anon. “al-Nihīlīst wa-al-Ismāʿīliyya”. al-Ǧinān, 16 (1880), p. 489-495.
  • Anon. “ʿUdwān al-Durūz fī Ḥawrān”. Ṯamarāt al-Funūn, 317 (1881), p. 1.
  • Anon. “al-Waṭan wa-ašqiyāʾ al-Durūz”. Ṯamarāt al-Funūn, 322 (1881), p. 4.
  • Anon. “Tamaddun”. Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif, VI (1882), p. 213-215.
  • Anon. “al-Durūz”. al-Ǧinān, 20 (1883), p. 601-609.
  • Anon. “Ṭarāblus fī 9 rabīʿ al-ṯānī”. Ṯamarāt al-Funūn, 465 (1884), p. 4.
  • Anon. “al-Yazīdiyya aw-ʿabadat Iblīs”. al-Muqtaṭaf, 6 (1889), p. 393-398.
  • Anon. “al-Ittiḥād al-islāmī”. Ṯamarāt al-Funūn, 788 (1890), p. 1-2.
  • Anon. “Ṭāʾifat al-Durūz fī Lubnān wa-al-ittiḥād al-islāmī”. Ṯamarāt al-Funūn, 794 (1890), p. 2.
  • Anon. “al-Masāǧid wa-al-Durūz”. Ṯamarāt al-Funūn, 1341 (1901), p. 2.
  • Anon. “Ǧabal al-Durūz wa-fitnatihim”. al-Muqtabas, 4 (1910), p. 305-317.
  • Anon. “Aṣl al-Durūz”. al-Muqtabas, 4 (1910), p. 317-327.
  • al-Atāsī, Saʿīd. “Ḥimṣ li-ǧanāb mukātibinā al-fāḍil”. Ṯamarāt al-Funūn, 794 (1890), p. 3.
  • Badrān, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. “al-Yazīd fī Kurdistān”. al-Ǧinān, 15 (1876), p. 525-529.
  • al-Bustānī, Salīm. “al-Ṣaḥīfa al-Waḍiyya fī inhidām al-diyāna al-ʿibriyya”. al-Ǧinān, 2 (1870), p. 42-43.
  • al-Bustānī, Salīm. “al-Difāʿ”. al-Ǧinān, 16 (1871), p. 537-538.
  • al-Bustānī, Salīm. “Tawḍīḥ al-Niẓāmāt al-asāsiyya”. al-Ǧinān, 7 (1877), p. 237-242.
  • al-Daḥdāḥ, Niʿmatullāh Isḥāq, “Murāsalāt: Bayrūt fī 26 šubāṭ”. Ṯamarāt al-Funūn, 1321 (1901), p. 5.
  • al-Ǧuraydīnī, Yaʿqūb. “al-Nuṣayrīyya”. al-Ǧinān, 20 (1875), p. 699-706.
  • al-Karmalī, Anastās. “al-Yazīdiyya”. al-Mašriq, 1 (1899), p. 32-37.
  • al-Karmalī, Anastās, . “al-Yazīdiyya”. al-Mašriq, 16 (1899), p. 731-736.
  • al-Qummuṣ Fīlūṯāwus. “Bāqat Maʿānī min rawḍat al-Bustānī”. al-Ǧinān, 1 (1871), p. 18-20.
  • al-Qummuṣ Fīlūṯāwus. “Bāqat Maʿānī min rawḍat al-Bustānī”. al-Ǧinān, 2 (1871), p. 56-60.
  • Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, Ḥusayn. “Murāsalāt: Lubnān fī 11 šubāṭ”. Lisān al-Ḥāl, 338 (1881), p. 3.
  • al-Šidyāq, Aḥmad Fāris. Silsilat al-aʿmāl al-maǧhūla. Azīz al-ʿAẓma and Fawwāz Ṭarābulsī (eds.). London, Riyāḍ al-Rayyis, 1995.
  • Šuqayr, Isbir. “Qabīlat al-ʿAsīriyyīn”. al-Ǧinān, 8 (1871), p. 262.
  • ʿUṯmānī Ṣādiq. “al-Ittiḥād al-islāmī”. Ṯamarāt al-Funūn, 790 (1890), p. 2.
  • Wahbī, Aḥmad. “al-Ṣabr”. al-Ǧinān, 14 (1871), p. 481-483.
  • Wahbī, Aḥmad. “Nūr al-maʿrifa”. al-Ǧinān, 20 (1871), p. 698-700.
  • Zayn al-Dīn, Muḥammad. “al-Ittiḥād al-islāmī”. Ṯamarāt al-Funūn, 793 (1890), p. 2.
  • Abu-ʿUksa, Wael. “The Premodern History of ‘Civilisation’ in Arabic: Rifāʿa Al-Ṭahṭāwī and His Medieval Sources”. Die Welt des Islams, 3-4...
  • Alkan, Necati. “The Ottoman Policy of ‘Correction of Belief(s)’”. In: Ottoman Sunnism: New Perspectives. Vefa Erginbaş (ed.). Edinburgh, Edinburgh...
  • Antic, Oxana. “The Spread of Modern Cults in the USSR”. In: Religious Policy in the Soviet Union. Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.). Cambridge, Cambridge...
  • Ayalon, Ami. The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History. New York, Oxford University Press, 1995.
  • Ayalon, Ami. “The Syrian Educated Elite and the Literary Nahda”. In: Ottoman Reform and Muslim Regeneration: Studies in Honour of Butrus Abu-Manneh....
  • Ayalon, Ami. The Arabic Print Revolution: Cultural Production and Mass Readership. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
  • Balph, James McKinnis. Fifty Years of Mission Work in Syria. Pittsburgh, Press of Murdoch Kerr & Co., 1913.
  • Daftary, Farhad. The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismaʿilis. London, I.B. Tauris, 1995.
  • Deringil, Selim. “‘They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery’: The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate”. Comparative Studies...
  • Glaß, Dagmar. Der Muqtaṭaf und seine Öffentlichkeit: Aufklärung, Räsonnement und Meinungsstreit in der frühen arabischen Zeitschriftenkommunikation....
  • Gölbaşı, Edip. “Turning the ‘Heretics’ into Loyal Muslim Subjects: Imperial Anxieties, the Politics of Religious Conversion, and the Yezidis...
  • Grehan, James. Twilight of the Saints: Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014.
  • Hanssen, Jens. Fin De Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005.
  • Hill, Peter. Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019.
  • Holt, Elizabeth M. “Narrative and the Reading Public in 1870s Beirut”. Journal of Arabic Literature, 1 (2009), p. 37-70.
  • Hourani, Albert. “Ideologies of the Mountain and the City”. In: Essays on the Crisis in Lebanon. Roger Owen (ed.). London, Ithaca Press, 1976,...
  • Kendall, Elisabeth. “Between Politics and Literature: Journals in Alexandria and Istanbul at the End of the Nineteenth Century”. In: Modernity...
  • Khuri-Makdisi, Ilham. “The Conceptualization of the Social in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Arabic Thought and Language”. In:...
  • Kreyenbroek, Philip G. “Yazīdī”. In: EI².
  • Langer, Robert, and Udo Simon. “The Dynamics of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy. Dealing with Divergence in Muslim Discourses and Islamic Studies”....
  • Magout, Mohammad. “Salīm Al-Bustānī: On the Constitution (1877)”. In: Global Secularity: A Sourcebook, II, The Middle East and North Africa....
  • Makdisi, Ussama. The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon. Berkeley, University...
  • Makdisi, Ussama. “Ottoman Orientalism”. The American Historical Review, 3 (2002), p. 768-796.
  • Makdisi, Ussama. Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World. Oakland, University of California Press,...
  • Merali, Amaan. “Ismaʿili-Ottoman Petitioners in the Second Constitutional Period”. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle...
  • Pietruschka, Ute. “Bedouin”. In: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (ed.). Leiden-Boston-Köln, Brill, I, 2001, p. 214-218.
  • Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York, Vintage Books, 1979.
  • Schäbler, Birgit. “State(s) Power and the Druzes: Integration and the Struggle for Social Control (1838-1949)”. In: The Syrian Land: Processes...
  • Schäbler, Birgit. “Civilizing Others: Global Modernity and the Local Boundaries (French, German, Ottoman, and Arab) Of Savagery”. In: Globalization...
  • Şiviloğlu, Murat R. The Emergence of Public Opinion: State and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,...
  • Ṭarrāzī, Fīlīp dī. Tārīḫ al-Ṣiḥāfa al-ʿarabiyya. Beirut, al-Maṭbaʿa al-Adabiyya, 1913.
  • Warner, Michael. “Publics and Counterpublics”. Public Culture, 1 (2002), p. 49-90.
  • Winter, Stefan. A History of the ʿAlawis: From Medieval Aleppo to the Turkish Republic. Princeton-Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2017.
  • al-Ziraklī, Ḫayr al-Dīn. al-Aʿlām: Qāmūs tarāǧim li-ašhar al-riǧāl wa-al-nisāʾ min al-ʿarab wa-al-mustaʿribīn wa-al-mustašriqīn. Beirut, Dār...