Periodic Reporting for period 3 - GHOST (Geographies and Histories of the Ottoman Supernatural TraditionExploring Magic, the Marvelous, and the Strange in Ottoman Mentalities)
Reporting period: 2021-03-01 to 2022-08-31
The major aims of the project could be set as follows: first, to explore the meaning and content of what different social and cultural groups in Ottoman society meant by “marvelous”, “strange” or “extraordinary”, and, vice versa, the correspondent notions that covered what we now describe as “supernatural/preternatural”; second, to specify the Ottoman attitude(s) against beliefs in such phenomena or practice of such methods, both holy (e.g. miracles of dervishes) and suspect (magic, witchcraft); third, to localize these beliefs in the various Ottoman systems of thought: for instance, to show how different authors might attribute such phenomena to actions by the jinn or, alternatively, to a secret interaction of the cosmic elements; fourth, to analyze the various ways that changes took place from the mid-seventeenth century onwards (for instance, to study whether certain phenomena were pushed from the field of “inexplicable” to the field of “marvelous”; whether we can speak of any trend to “rationalize” the image of the world, and in what terms; in other terms, whether the Weberian notion of “disenchantment” can be applied in an Ottoman context). Last but not least, the project aims to associate these changes with emerging or declining layers of culture and specific social groups, in connection with the social changes throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
To this aim, the project will trace the semantic shifts in terms denoting nature, miracles, magic and so forth; it will examine miracles, dreams and their configuration, and the various world visions: of the science of letters, of the role of stars, of the homologies and hierarchies of the microcosm and the macrocosm. And if the above concern the field of the “supernatural”, there is also the “preternatural”, i.e. what is deemed natural (not miraculous) but inexplicable (the “paranormal” in modern terms): wonders of the world, hermetic knowledge, the jinn, and of course the shifting ways to interpret natural phenomena. A second direction of research studies efforts and techniques designed in order to establish human control over such phenomena: in other words, Ottoman occult sciences, such as divination, magic, astrology, alchemy and so forth; their epistemology, their place in the taxonomy of knowledge and the rationale beyond their foundation and use: the limits of possible human influence, the relationship with vernacular practices and so forth. Debates on the illicitness or the reliability of occult sciences (for instance, critics of astrology) are of course highly relevant to the subject.
The research team includes the PI (Marinos Sariyannis), two post-doctoral researchers (Zeynep Aydoğan, Işık Demirakin), three doctoral and several MA students and support staff, as well as a team of researchers collaborating as Third Parties: E. Menchinger (University of Manchester), A. Niyazioğlu (Oxford University), B. H. Küçük (University of Pennsylvania), A. T. Şen (Columbia University), G. Işıksel (Medeniyet University), and F. Coşkun (Özyegin University). It is hosted by the Institute for Mediterranean Studies of the Foundation of Research and Technology – Hellas, in Rethymno, Greece. The project maintains a web portal (https://ghost.ims.forth.gr/) which will host all the deliverables of the research. A bio-bibliographical dictionary and a bibliographie raisonnée of Ottoman sources pertaining to the subject is being compiled, and three international conferences are to be held (the first took place in December 2019). The research will also result in monographs by the PI and the post-doc fellows, as well as to several other papers and conferences. Furthermore, some minor tasks are allotted to two researchers recruited as subcontractors (K. Ivanyi, G. Tunalı): namely, searching library catalogues and collecting manuscripts on subjects related to the project, contributing with entries to the project database, assisting with transcriptions of manuscripts and assistance in reading texts in Arabic.
Research on the project’s topic has been carried out with great success so far, and parts of it have been presented in international conferences and meetings (see https://ghost.ims.forth.gr/news/). A highly successful international workshop on “Nature and the supernatural in Ottoman culture” was convened at the Columbia Global Centers | Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey, on 14-15 December 2019 (see https://ghost.ims.forth.gr/international-workshop-nature-and-the-supernatural-in-ottoman-culture-columbia-global-centers-istanbul-istanbul-turkey-14-15-december-2019/). Finally, the project launched an online, open access journal of the project (Aca’ib: Occasional Papers on the Ottoman Perceptions of the Supernatural, https://ghost.ims.forth.gr/acaib/).