In the secularist-nationalist historiography of Ottoman modernization, the persistent continuity of religious aspirations and establishments posed a major enigma for reductionist binary categories, above all, modern/progressive vs. traditional/backward. Imagining religion as a primordially conservative phenomenon that was not only in direct opposition to modernity and modernization but also destined to stay perfectly unaffected by it, secularist historiography expected religion to disappear totally from the public sphere leaving in its place pure reason, and its handmaiden science, which supposedly would be the sole criterion for truth, good life, and good government. This secularist-nationalist reading of Ottoman modernization and science presents at least two major problems. First, it reifies Islam as an essentially static accumulation of dogmas and rigid institutions rather than approaching it as a living cultural tradition. As an enduring and vibrant tradition, Islam proved its ability to rearticulate its teachings, modify meanings attached to its practices, render its institutions more functional under new circumstances, and consequently convince its practitioners to keep attached to primordial loyalties. Secondly, the Eurocentric tone of the narrative of modernization reveals a stylized, and hence distorted, picture of European history, insofar as the religious and the secular are inevitably, continuously in conflict with each other. Recent studies challenge both conclusions. For instance, in European history, natural theology played a vital intellectual role in harmonizing science with religion. Similarly, natural theological trends in Islamdom, whether in its Christian or Muslim form, played a comparable role. Far from being simple obstacles to the triumph of modernization, natural theology, especially in its popular forms, projected the responses of two sister civilizations to the challenge of a world historical phenomenon. This paper will explore such popular Ottoman science journals from the second half of the nineteenth century (esp. 1860s-1880s) as Mecmua-i Fünun, Mecmua-i İbretnüma, Mir’at, Hadika, Hafta, and it will specifically focus on the uses of natural theology in the pages of these journals. Thus, it hopes to demonstrate how the Islamicate civilization responded to world historical phenomena by drawing on its own resources and finding its own solutions in conversation with the Western civilization. It proved to be a productive conversation, one that finally helped to indigenize modern science. Neither subterfuge (‘the invention of tradition’) nor apologia does justice to the transformation of Islamicate civilization in the modern world. It was much more complex.

The long nineteenth century witnessed the larger scale reforms undertaken by the Ottoman state with its various agencies. These reforms and regulations (tanzimat) in a wide range of areas including education, judiciary, military, bureaucratic and medical institutions brought about reconstruction of concepts of science, religion, and politics as separate fields. The scholarship on the late Ottoman Empire so far has focused on reforms intiated and undertaken by the state. However, the role of the micro-scale discussions and contestations between intellectuals in forming new ideas of science, religion, politics and literature has not been studied in depth. In this paper I will point out the power and authority that shaped the micro-level discussions which entailed a reconfiguration of ideas of ilim (science), alim (learned man/scientist), hakim (philosopher) and edib (literati) through a study of the correspondence between two prominent intellectuals of the late Ottoman period namely Ahmed Midhat and Fatma Aliye. Midhat was the most prolific journalist intellectual of the late Ottoman Empire who played a huge role in popularizing modern science by exploiting the benefits of printing press and forms of mass media including novels, journals, and newspapers. Fatma Aliye, the protege of Midhat, was the leading female novelist and intellectual of the period. In their correspondence Ahmed Midhat and Fatma Aliye were taking the role of teacher and student respectively. Their correspondence shows that reconfiguration of concepts such as science, knowledge, and philosophy entailed a reconsideration of ideas of scientist, philosopher, and literati. Considering their intellectual formation, the style of reasoning, and the roles they assumed in the correspondence I argue that the discussion about these categories is nothing less than a confrontation between Islamic tradition and European Enlightenment, the man and the woman, the mentor and the student. I show that while Fatma Aliye was relying on the previous Islamic intellectual corpus in conceptualizing “scientist” “philosopher” and “literati,” Ahmed Midhat was using the enlightenment philosophers as authorities in rejecting Aliye’s arguments.

This paper intends to deal with technology transfer to the Ottoman Empire, and its possible relation to the concept of “the useful knowledge” (ulum-u nafia), which was important in various classifications of the sciences proposed by Muslim scholars in the premodern period. By focusing primarily on Ebu Sehl Numan Efendi, an Ottoman scholar in the eighteenth century, and his work entitled Tedbirat-i Pesendide which is a military recommendation-diary, I will question the way in which the Ottomans internalized new sets of knowledge appropriated from Europe, particularly engineering-oriented knowledge, by applying to the idea of the “useful knowledge.” Numan Efendi was a madrasa scholar who appointed a variety of important judicial positions throughout his career. He was not only well-educated in theoretical and madrasa-oriented sciences, but also remarkably talented in practical sciences such that when he was a border imam among the group that represented the Ottoman Empire in designating new borders of the states after the war between the Ottoman, Habsburg and Russian states, as he reports in his book, he could make the instrument used by the Habsburg by himself. Interestingly enough, Ebu Sehl Numan Efendi frequently refers to the concept of the useful knowledge in his diary, Tedbirat-i Pesendide, when he feels himself compelled to legitimize what he wants to appropriate from European practical knowledge, claiming that this knowledge already belongs to him. I will argue that Ebu Sehl Numan Efendi’s self-confidence in appropriating knowledge stems from the complex relationship between the practical knowledge and the traditional religious sciences, particularly, fiqh (jurisprudence) and kalam (Islamic theology). The main questions of my paper will be as follows: What was the positive/negative impacts of the concept of the useful knowledge on transferring technology? Can one can claim that scientific knowledge have global or local belonging according to the classical Islamic-Ottoman understanding? How Ebu Sehl Numan Efendi legitimize while he was transferring European technology? And finally, what are the main contributions of Ebu Sehl Numan Efendi to Ottoman Military Engineering?

Ismail Gelenbevi is one of the most prolific scholars in eighteenth century Ottoman Istanbul, with more than thirty works in many disciplines including kalām (Islamic theology), logic, mathematics and astronomy. Being a madrasa professor, as well as a mathematics teacher at the naval engineering school established in 1775, and also having written on both Islamic scholarship and early modern science, he represents a transitional figure in Ottoman education between the already existing scholarly traditions, primarily represented by the madrasa, and the newly emerging system of knowledge in the Ottoman territory mainly based upon the engineering-oriented European science. This dual character of Gelenbevi seems to have led later authors of bibliographical and other secondary works to emphasize on one aspect of his scholarship over others. In this context, a striking example is the scholarship of Ahmet Cevdet Pasha, a famous Ottoman statesman and scholar, who wrote well known chronicle work, Tarih-i Cevdet in the nineteenth century. This work, though acknowledging Gelenbevi’s success in the madrasa sciences, focuses heavily on his achievements in early modern mathematics and engineering. This paper aims to deal with the meaning of the way Gelenbevi is narrated in Tarih-i Cevdet, given the fact that the period during which Ahmet Cevdet Pasha wrote his chronicle can be characterized by the increasingly impact of the European systems including the political and the scientific, upon the Ottoman Empire, as well as by the efforts made by the Ottoman political and intellectual elites in the nineteenth century to respond to the European challenges they faced. I will argue that Tarih-i Cevdet’s narrative on Gelenbevi not only shows the Ottoman elites’ interest in mathematical and engineering knowledge transmitted from Europe as necessary assets for strengthening the state, but also shows how they retrospectively construed the legacy of a learned man of this era as being one of rivalry with respect to his European counterparts.

During the Ottoman period, the Balkan Muslims learned the religious issues from the imams of mosques, the sheiks of tekkes and the teachers of madrasas. These learned people and educational institutions belonged to ministries of the Ottoman government. For this reason, Istanbul, the capital city of the Ottoman Empire, influenced this region via those who were educated in Istanbul madrasas and assigned to the Balkan cities. After the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from South Eastern Europe throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many new complications arose and, accordingly, solutions sought by the Muslims who fell into a minority within this region. The problems of being a minority were seen in all parts of social life, especially in the area of social and religious rights. The South Eastern European Muslims had become a minority in the new states because of their religious identities, and their numbers decreased because of the migrations from the Balkans to Anatolia at different times. As a result, those who stayed in Europe instead of migrating were presented with new predicaments in practicing their religions. In this paper, I examine the struggle of the South Eastern European Muslims to avoid losing their religious identities, when they chose to stay after the collapsed of the Ottoman Empire instead of migrating to Anatolia. Since this struggle was led by scholars and students, madrasas as their educational institutions, played an important role in shaping religious life. I argue, within the context of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, that the madrasas became independent from the learning hierarchy of Istanbul. Instead they changed their orientation towards Cairo and Al-Azhar University, and so the influence of Cairo on South Eastern Europe was born and spread with educational activities. I explain the reasons of this change and discuss it in the context of a newly formed political arena, national borders and shifting identities.