This paper seeks to explore the role of the body in the transmission and expression of spiritual power in the late medieval literary corpus of Old Anatolian Turkish. The paper will look at epic narratives such as the Battalname and the Book of Dede Korkut, hagiographies such as those of Hacı Bektaş and Abdal Musa, mesnevis such as Şeyyad Hamza’s Yusuf u Zeliha and Şadi Meddah’s Maktel, among others. It will explore representations of the body as the locus of spiritual power and wisdom, where access to the Prophet or saint’s body, as expressed in the transmission of saliva, ablution water and the like, denotes the attainment of one’s own spiritual perfection and leads to the performance of miracles. The senses play a special role in this material understanding of spiritual lineage, where the saint’s gaze, sound or smell define and create the unique spiritual experience of the devoted follower.

The Safavid Revolution was a sensational one, for it transformed the sensorial and material landscape in Iran and beyond. The adoption of the Shi'i adhan, with its distinctive proclamations, and clamorous rituals involving effigy burning and symbolic violence, inundated the senses of both allies and adversaries. This transformation was further reflected in the iconic twelve-gored crimson headgear instituted by Shaykh Haydar (d. 1480), father of Shah Ismail I (r. 1501-1524). This red hat served as a powerful visual marker, captivating the gaze and refashioning the Safavid identity. The moniker "Qizilbash" ("Redheads") itself testifies to its significance. For Safavids, it represented sanctity and loyalty, while for Sunni rivals, it symbolized heresy and rebellion. Drawing on diverse sources like travelogues, Qizilbash religious texts, legal documents, and polemics, this analysis delves into the contentious role of the headgear. By integrating material and sensory studies, it argues that grooming practices like headwear played a critical role in shaping confessional and communal identity. This approach challenges traditional narratives that overemphasize theological debates and legal pronouncements in understanding Sunni-Shi'i differences. It posits that tangible artifacts, sensory experiences, and even grooming habits were equally, if not more, crucial in differentiating communities, fostering belonging, and building associations.

The occult-imperial turn that defined the post-Mongol Persianate world saw a proliferation of grimoires as handbooks of court culture—and invaluable typologies of courtly sensorial experience. I present and contextualize for comparative study a minor Persian manual of illusionism and trickery, Boon for the Khan, by the Herati Naqshbandi Sufi, preacher and occultist ʿAlī Ṣafī (d. 1533), as strategic window onto this turn generally and the politically and militarily fraught Timurid-Safavid, Sunni-Shiʿi transition specifically. Commissioned by a Qizilbash warlord in 1522, it emblematizes the wider democratizing, Renaissance ethos that is a distinctive feature of early modernities West and East, especially occult-scientifically; it was written to help make Safavid courtly and military life quite literally stage-magical. This wonderfully accessible manual of warlord magic—devoted to boozing and battling (bazm u razm) in a way no known previous grimoire in the Western tradition had been—marries ancient Platonic-Alexandrian occult philosopher-kingship to modern “occult democracy” to engage and indeed weaponize all the physical (and a few extraphysical) senses.

Built during the most intense phase of Safavid centralization under Shah Abbas I (1587-1629), Maydan-e Naqsh-i Jahan represents one of the most magnificent civic spaces of the early modern Islamicate period. The square is symbolic of state power in the spatial construction of royal authority made visible with the building of Ali Qapu, a pavilion that identifies the entrance to a large royal residential complex. This paper, however, seeks to go beyond a monarchy-centric account of Safavid politics in the architectural design of maydan-e Naqsh-i Jahan by offering an experiential conception of the political life of the square as a site of sensations. While relying on the writings of Mirza Hasan, a Safavid historian, about the square, the study shows how the clamor of myriad activities ranging from sports to military parades and religious ceremonies marked an experiential site of noises and utterances as sonic scenes of death, carnival, and life. In a sensory account of the Maydan, the paper also argues that at the center of Safavid civic and political life lay the embodied practices of the utterances whose clamors resonated along with noises of the bazaar, the mosque, and the palace, all architecturally part of the visual assemblage of the urban order. The paper finally considers other resonated performances that played a crucial role in Safavid public life and state power by producing a spectacle of clamors to sustain a political body.

The sensorial experiences enjoyed in the Ottoman and Safavid sacred spaces have not been given enough attention and yet stand as a curious research topic. While the subject has been investigated within the Ottoman context by Emine Fetvacı and Nina Ergin, who have introduced the multi-sensory aesthetic of Ottoman mosques and conceptualized them as venues offering different sensorial experiences, sensory aspects of Safavid religious spaces did not become the focus of any such research yet. This study intends to contribute to the limited literature on the sensory history of the early modern Islamic sacred spaces with a comparative case study of two early-seventeenth-century royal mosques. Focusing on Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul and Shah Mosque in Isfahan, it aims to reveal the sensory aspects of Ottoman and Safavid mosques and the sensorial-aesthetic appeals of their patrons and audiences. This inquiry argues that both mosques had designs pleasing different senses of their audiences, and offered multi-sensory experiences to their visitors. They had particular design elements, including eye-pleasing decorations, spatial harmony, and acoustic qualities, and were adorned with equipment such as incense burners and luxury lamps to appeal to the senses of sight, smell, touch, and hearing. Vocal practices and chanting sessions, including the recital of the Qur’an and the canonical texts in vernacular languages (Mevlid and Rawḍa), offered auditory experiences to worshippers frequenting these sanctuaries. Stiputalitons in their endowment deeds and the presence of luxury incense burners attest to the olfactory and haptic experiences offered to the visitors of these mosques. As a rather extraordinary practice within the context of Friday mosques, banquets offered to the participants of commemorative ceremonies, Mevlid and ‘Ashura, addressed the sense of flavor. This research relies on narrative sources, including endowment deeds, poems, and travelogues, as well as studies and observations on the buildings’ design and technical aspects. In this sense, it offers a multi-disciplinary approach combining the methods for the studies of history and architecture. Its multi-faceted framework and findings would similarly contribute to different disciplines investigating the functional-performative, aesthetic, and spatial-architectural, along with the sensorial aspects of the sacred spaces created in the early modern Ottoman and Safavid worlds.