MESA Banner
Sufis and the Sufi Lodges in Istanbul in the Late 19th Century: A Spatial Analysis
Abstract
This study primarily investigates the social and spatial history of Sufism in Istanbul during the late 19th century. Drawing on a unique population registry, which records exclusively Sufis and Sufi lodges in Istanbul, this study will reconstruct the locations of Sufi lodges and the social profiles of Sufis in order to question how visible and present Sufism was in the Ottoman capital, and what this visibility demonstrates the historical realities of Sufism in the late-19th century. Through utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools and methodologies, it examines the space and place of Sufism in the Ottoman society and its impact on the social and religious aspects of the everyday life in the context of nineteenth-century Istanbul. There is a little effort to investigate the social aspect of Sufism as well as the agency of the ordinary Sufi dervishes in historical studies. Additionally, there is a preponderance of research that scrutinizes the architectural features of individual lodges, while ignoring the importance of the lodges in the urban space. While reconstructing the social profiles within the tekkes, thus revealing the agency of “less” significant Sufis, this study contributes to the scholarship by revealing the spatial aspect of Sufi lodges through a set of maps that visualize their distribution and their spatial networks within urban space by way of highlighting a number of select variables. Drawing on the maps and the visualized data, this study claims that Sufism was one of the most significant aspects of urban life in the Ottoman capital. However, there were certain areas in Istanbul where Sufis were not extensively present: Unkapan?-Bayezid and Galata-Pera. While this spatial orientation, to a certain extent, was a reflection of two Sufi teachings, “abandoning the world (terk-i dünya)” and “solitude in the crowd (halvet der encuman), the Western domination over the urban space in Galata-Pera led to an absence of Sufi in that area.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Ottoman Empire
Sub Area
None