The introduction and early development of the genetic sciences in modern Iran coincided with the country’s tumultuous transition from decentralized, multi-ethnic empire to authoritarian nation-state under the Pahlavi dynasty. In the 1930s, Reza Shah sent hundreds of Iranian students to European universities and welcomed dozens of European, especially French and German, scientists to help modernize Iranian higher education. These academic ties, alongside Nazi cultural diplomacy, fomented a fascination with Aryan race theory among the Persian-speaking Iranian elite. Unsurprisingly, as freshly trained Iranian biologists and anthropologists applied Western-style methodologies like anthropometrics and population genetics to the study of their own people, their scientific enterprise became tightly entwined with the Pahlavi regime’s political goals of constructing an Aryan, European-oriented national identity for Iran. Through analysis of the research publications of Iranian scientists working between 1935-1979, I demonstrate that they routinely structured their research questions and conclusions based on the unquestioned assumptions of the nationalist narrative of the Aryan invasion of the Iranian plateau. Studies on non-Persian Iranian populations, including Jews and Arabs, were conducted to determine how these groups were related to the “default” Persian-Aryan ethnicity. While the 1979 revolution promised to eliminate the overt structures of ethnic discrimination against non-Persians and attempted to eradicate Pahlavi Aryanism in favor of an Islamic national identity, published results of genetic research carried out in Iran from 1980-2010 show little to no corresponding change in experimental approaches or interpretations. Many Iranian geneticists still regularly refer to the Iranian population as “Aryan” and continue to base their scientific research on received popular notions that Iranians represent an “Aryan” ethnicity, suggesting the extent to which this sense of ethnic identity persists among Persian Iranians at a popular, if not necessarily state, level. I argue that the persistence of this trope within Iranian biology reflects not only enduring concepts of national identity within Iran, but also the participation of Iranian scientists within the global scientific community, wherein standardized practices of human population studies tend to reinforce national categories.

The paper explores conceptualizations of insanity and madness in the Levant through the examination of various primary sources from Western travelers and observers of the “Orient” (including medical missionaries) as well as from Eastern insiders, in specific through the medical and scientific writings of the rising intelligentsia of the Nahḍa. The paper focuses on the 19th century, just prior to the establishment of ʿAṣfuriyyeh (or the Lebanon Hospital for the Insane) in 1896 as the first “modern” lunatic asylum in “Bible Lands.” Although the founder (the Swiss missionary Quaker Theophilus Waldmeier) and the renown medical superintendents who supported the endeavor insisted that there was a great need for such a “home” or “refuge” (maljaʾ) to treat the insane and rescue the mad (maʿtūh/majnūn) who were left abandoned—begging on the streets or brutally beaten in “holy caves,” the evidence from the medical literature of the period shows that contrary to common assumptions based on Orientalist literary exegesis (Lamartine, Flaubert, and the like) madness was not prevalent in the Orient. Indeed, the Orient was on the whole incapable of madness because inherently resistant to change and civilization; for the 19th century alienists madness was predominantly a product of civilization. The rising Ottoman Syrian medical elite on the other hand (though on the whole and paradoxically the product of Western education and styles of thinking) had a different take on the causes and interpretations of insanity (more in tune with the missionary ethos of fighting superstition and ignorance) and these will be explored in depth through the key medical and scientific journals and magazines of the period. So was it simply ignorance and the lack of trained clinical gazes that explains the (perceived) low prevalence of insanity in the fin-de-siècle Levant or was it the process of Westernization/civilization/modernization that unveiled the preponderance of these afflictions (maʾsāt)? The paper is an attempt to start charting the anatomical landscape of madness before one is able to answer the question further and explore some of its implications for contemporary psychiatric practices in the Middle East.

Although recent works such as War, Epidemics, and Medicine in the Late Ottoman Empire (1912-1918) by Oya Dağlar and Healing The Nation: Prisoners of War, Medicine, and Nationalism in Turkey, 1914-1939 by Yücel Yanıkdağ attest the growing interest in the history of medicine in late Ottoman Empire, scholars paid little attention to how late Ottoman literature reflects the changing perspectives in medicine. I argue that while earlier 19th century literary texts glorified physical sickness as a manifestation of one’s devotion to homeland, later writings considered illness a crisis that needed immediate cure. This transformation occurred as Ottoman authors became well versed with the Western medicine, and ceased relying on a long tradition of mystical poetry that associated sickness with intense love. To trace this change, I explore the rivalry between two character types, the poet and the doctor, that appear in many late Ottoman works, such as Homeland or Silistre by Namık Kemal, The Remnant of Love by Kaytazzade Nazım, and Truth and Imagination co-authored by Ahmet Mithat and Fatma Aliye. In earlier texts, the poet’s eloquent words on sickness caused by his love for homeland give him mastery in medical knowledge that the doctor can never attain. However, later writings eulogize the physician who, unlike the poet, can cure sicknesses. Furthermore, many early 20th century literary authors identified themselves with the doctor and claimed to cure the society. They thus distanced themselves from the past literary traditions embodied by the poet. This analysis reveals that changing opinions about medicine in late Ottoman Empire played a central role in shaping literary representations of homeland and an author’s role in the society. Furthermore, it implicates that social attitudes towards medicine strongly impact perceptions about literary history, genres, and traditions—an impact that has not been examined in Middle Eastern studies, let alone in medical humanities.

One of the most influential philosophical discourses on the relationship of modern science to Islam can be found in the Risale-i Nur of Said Nursi (d. 1960). Nursi sought to simultaneously revive both religious faith and scientific progress in the Ottoman Muslim world, and his proposal of a sort of ‘sanctification of nature’ to that end has been the subject of some scholarly enquiry. Besides reframing the spiritual practice of tefekkür to incorporate meditation on the natural world, Nursi saw that the practical application of modern scientific enquiry could potentially be harnessed within a religious philosophical framework. This paper explores, by way of anthropological fieldwork, the reception and application of Said Nursi’s philosophy of science in the contemporary Hizmet Movement in Turkey. Particularly, it explores the philosophical justification for engagement as religious actors in the technical sciences, an aspect of modern scientific culture in the Muslim world that is often assumed to be largely pragmatic and economically motivated, and divorced from any religious meaning of its own. This paper challenges that assumption, firstly by drawing on the text of the Risale-i Nur and the writings of Fethullah Gülen, and secondly by presenting data from fieldwork carried out in Hizmet scientific and educational communities in Turkey. Primarily, it shows how practitioners within the movement derive spiritual meaning from the practical application of science, namely in the fields of medicine and engineering, by positing a link to the duty and purpose of mankind as khalifa of Allah on earth. This observation is situated within a wider ethnographic framework which traces the activities and evolving priorities of the Hizmet Movement in the field of science research and education, focusing on its emergence as an actor in the lucrative field of private higher education in Turkey in recent years.