Non-Sunni Muslims in the Late Ottoman Empire

State and Missionary Perceptions of the Alawis

Necati Alkan

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780755644742
• eBook ISBN:
  9780755616862
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History

The Alawis or Alawites are a minority Muslim sect, predominantly based in Syria, Turkey and Lebanon. Over the course of the 19th century, they came increasingly under the attention of the ruling Ottoman authorities in their attempts to modernize the Empire, as well as Western Protestant missionaries.

Using Ottoman state archives and contemporary chronicles, this book explores the Ottoman government's attitudes and policies towards the Alawis, revealing how successive regimes sought to bring them into the Sunni mainstream fold for a combination of political, imperial and religious reasons. In the context of increasing Western interference in the empire's domains, Alkan reveals the origins of Ottoman attempts to 'civilize' the Alawis, from the Tanzimat period to the Young Turk Revolution. He compares Ottoman attitudes to Alawis against its treatment of other minorities, including Bektashis, Alevis, Yezidis and Iraqi Shi'a.

An important new contribution to the literature on the history of the Alawis and Ottoman policy towards minorities, this book will be essential reading for scholars of the late Ottoman Empire and minorities of the Middle East.

Chapter 1

THE NUSAYRIS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE: A ‘HETERODOX’ TRIBAL COMMUNITY AND THE STATE

1.1. The Nusayri-Alawis: Beliefs and history

In his book about ‘heretics’ in the Ottoman Empire in the fifteen to seventeenth centuries the Turkish scholar Ahmet Yaşar Ocak quotes Xenophon,¹ a student of Socrates, asking himself by what arguments his teacher was indicted and why the Athenians believed that he had to die for the good of the state: ‘For the indictment against him was something like the following: Socrates commits an injustice by not believing in the gods in which the city believes and by bringing in new and different divine things (daimonia); he commits an injustice also by corrupting the young.’²

This being just one example, throughout history followers of various religions and groups within religions accused each other of being deviant from what was perceived as the ‘true’ or ‘sound faith’; those who were labelled as ‘heretics’ were blamed for misleading or corrupting the people. Looking at the statement just quoted, we can infer that states that have an official religion can force people to follow it with all its obligations. Anything else introduced from outside is regarded as blasphemy and heresy.

There are differences in all religious traditions due to several factors, such as theological, socio-political, cultural, economic and ethnic. As a result, each group tends to label those who are different from them as ‘the other’, despite the fact that they belong to the same religion. Such is the case not only in Islam.

While divergence from the mainstream does not ipso facto create a need for a formal split into factions, there will always be groups who use opposition to the dominant tradition as a means of affirming their separateness; and similarly, the mainstream understanding of a tradition can be strengthened by criticising alternative understandings.³

Within Islam, the groups outside the mainstream, ‘the other among us’ or the ‘internal others’, are called al-firaq ad-dalla (‘misguided sects’) or ahl al-bid‘a (‘people of innovation’, sectarians); labels that refer to ‘deviant’ conceptual trends or sects within Islam. Their conflicting viewpoints are perceived as the origin of fitna (‘sedition’) and hence as a threat to the unity of Islam. And whereas these sects accuse the mainstream of being insufficient and heretical, they are themselves called ‘outsiders’ (khawarij) in the mainstream traditions. Another term that has been used pejoratively by Sunnis for ‘internal others’ who refuse legitimate Islamic leadership and authority is rafida/rawafid, meaning ‘rejecter(s)’. This has been especially applied to the mainstream Twelver Shi‘a and any of the Shi‘i groups.⁴ In the Ottoman Empire followers of Shi‘a Islam and various of its off-shoots such as the Isma‘ilis, Nusayris, Alevis, Bektaşis, etc., were called râfizî/revâfız, or ehl-i rafz.⁵ Yet, interestingly, the Ottoman state also called sedentary Sunni tribes and the ultra-Sunni Wahhabi movement as of the eighteenth century râfizî due to their opposition to the state.⁶ Another widely used term for ‘heresy, heretical’, borrowed from Persian, is zindiq (Arab.) or zındık (Turk.).⁷ dalal (and its variants), i.e. ‘error; going astray’ (cf. Q 1:7) is a term mentioned in many places in the Qur’an and needs to be seen in combination with al-firaq ad-dalla for sects deemed as ‘misguided’.

Looking from this ‘orthodox’ viewpoint, we may argue that Islam bases its beliefs primarily on the Qur’an as a revealed holy text; hence the Word of God is the ‘true belief’ and the foundation. ‘Guide us in the straight path (ihdina as-sirat al-mustaqim)’ (Q 1:6)⁸ is the middle way; anything else outside it is excess (ifrat) or deficiency (tafrit or taqsir). The recipients of the Prophet Muhammad’s (d. 632) message were, firstly, the polytheistic Arabs who had to be brought back to the true belief in the one God (Allah) and so abandoned all other deities, and secondly the Jews and Christians who had corrupted their teachings. They all had strayed from the ‘straight path’, not obeying the real commandments of Allah and so not submitting to His will (islam). They needed to be reminded of the true religion, named islam in the Qur’an, and receive guidance (huda) to it. The third recipient of the Quran’s message is, of course, the Muslims. The first Sura (1:7) stresses at the end that God may preserve the believers from the path of ‘those who are astray’ (ad-dallin).

According to Islam’s message, the previous confessions or religions, such as Arab Paganism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity, were subverted and so made a new divine message necessary, which in turn needed to abrogate their administrations, laws and excesses. As is expressed in Qur’an 5:48, ‘To every one of you We have appointed a right way and an open road (li-kullin ja‘alna minkum shir‘atan wa minhajan)’, we can say that each prophet abrogates the laws of his predecessor.⁹ Islam replaces difficulties or hardships in previous dispensations; in other words, it restores the ‘deterioration of the pristine, easy-going relationship between God and His creatures (sometimes characterized in the sources by the term fiṭra) into a series of abstruse and arduous legal systems’.¹⁰ In the words of Ze’ev Maghen:

Islamic tradition on the whole envisions what amounts to only two über-phases in the forward march of humankind: (1) the world under the spiritual sovereignty of a wide range of sinfully innovative and harmfully excessive doctrines; (2) the world under the spiritual sovereignty of the restorative and moderating doctrine of Islam… To the extent that the pristine, fiṭra-based faith of Adam - and its later reincarnation, the millat Ibrāhīm [religion of Abraham] – are included in this legendary historical process, we might better speak of a bell-curve in three stages: (1) the reign of right religion, (2) doctrinal deviation/innovation across the board, and (3) return to Truth with Islam.¹¹

Harmfully excessive doctrines or ‘wrong beliefs’ in pre-Islamic dispensations, then, needed to be replaced. One of the concepts that is central to Islamic belief and has been used to this day in discourses about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ belief is ghuluww or ‘transgression’ with regard to religious beliefs. Apart from oral traditions (sg. hadith), the ghuluww concept occurs twice in the Qur’an; in 4:171 and 5:72–77 in the context of the ‘corrupted’ beliefs of the Christians calling Jesus ‘son of God’, and in 9:30 – though in this latter verse ghuluww is not mentioned but implied – the Jews are condemned for calling the prophet ‘Uzayr/Ezra ‘son of God’:

People of the Book, go not beyond the bounds in your religion (la taghlu fi dinikum), and say not as to God but the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only the Messenger of God, and His Word that He committed to Mary, and a Spirit from Him. So believe in God and His Messengers, and say not, ‘Three.’ Refrain; better is it for you. God is only One God. Glory be to Him – That He should have a son! To Him belongs all that is in the heavens and in the earth; God suffices for a guardian.

4:171

They are unbelievers who say, ‘God is the Messiah, Mary’s son.’ For the Messiah said, ‘Children of Israel, serve God, my Lord and your Lord. Verily whoso associates with God anything, God shall prohibit him entrance to Paradise, and his refuge shall be the Fire; and wrongdoers shall have no helpers.’ They are unbelievers who say, ‘God is the Third of Three.’ No god is there but One God. If they refrain not from what they say, there shall afflict those of them that disbelieve a painful chastisement.… The Messiah, son of Mary, was only a Messenger; Messengers before him passed away; his mother was a just woman; they both ate food. Behold, how We make clear the signs to them; then behold, how they perverted are! … Say: ‘People of the Book, go not beyond the bounds in your religion (la taghlu fi dinikum), other than the truth, and follow not the caprices of a people who went astray (dallu) before, and led astray (adallu) many, and now again have gone astray from the right way.’

5:72–77

The Jews say, ‘Ezra is the Son of God’; the Christians say, ‘The Messiah is the Son of God.’ That is the utterance of their mouths, conforming with the unbelievers before them. God assail them! How they are perverted!

9:30

Thus Jews and Christians were criticized for overstating the roles of ‘Uzayr and Jesus, by referring to them as ‘God’ or as ‘the son of God’. The Christians were also criticized for the ‘monasticism they invented – We did not prescribe it for them’ (57:27). The Jews in turn were also castigated for their defamation of Jesus as being an ‘illegimate’ child; as well as for sanctioning marriage between half-siblings.¹² Owing to such extremes in religious beliefs, Muhammad is reported to have admonished his followers not to be excessive in their beliefs: ‘Those who went before you came to ruin because of extremism in their religion (halaka man qablakum bi’l-ghuluwwi fī’l-dīn)’ and ‘beware of exaggeration in religion (iyyākum wa’l-ghuluww fī’l-dīn).’¹³

A further central concept to which Muslims must adhere is the injunction ‘commanding right and forbidding wrong’ (al-amr bi al-ma‘rūf wa an-nahy ‘an al-munkar), a central and vital concept, mentioned in various places in the Qur’an (3:104, 110, 114; 7:157; 9:71, 112; 22:41, and 31:17).¹⁴ Within these directives, for example, the followers of Muhammad are called the ‘best nation’ (khayr umma), and they are ‘commanding right and forbidding wrong’ (3:110). It is a religious obligation that also concerns Muslim rulers and can be summarized as follows:

The principal function of government is to enable the individual to lead a good Muslim life. This is, in the last analysis, the purpose of the state, for which alone it is established by God, and for which alone statesmen are given authority over others.… The basic rule for Muslim social life and political life, commonly formulated as ‘to enjoin good and forbid evil,’ is thus a shared responsibility of the ruler and the subject, or in modern terms, of the state and the individual.¹⁵

Apart from the believers’ active engagement in ‘commanding right and forbidding wrong’, ‘disorder’ or ‘chaos’ (fitna) should be prevente...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• A note on transliteration
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright