Email: kevorkian.center@nyu.edu
Telephone: (212) 998-8877
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Spiritual Subjects: Central Asian Pilgrims and the Ottoman Hajj at the End of Empire

Book talk with Lâle Can

March 5, 2020
The book talk is free to attend

Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, 255 Sullivan Street, New York, NY 10012


At the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of Central Asians made the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Traveling long distances, many lived for extended periods in Ottoman cities dotting the routes. Though technically foreigners, these hajjis often blurred the lines between pilgrims and migrants. Not quite Ottoman, and not quite foreign, Central Asians became the sultan’s spiritual subjects. Their status was continually negotiated by Ottoman statesmen as attempts to exclude foreign Muslim nationals from the body politic were compromised by a changing international legal order and the caliphate’s ecumenical claims.

Spiritual Subjects examines the paradoxes of nationality reform and pan-Islamic politics in late Ottoman history. Lâle Can unravels how imperial belonging was wrapped up in deeply symbolic religious rites, as well as prosaic acts and experiences that paved the way to integration into Ottoman communities. A complex system of belonging emerged – one where it was possible for a Muslim to be both, by law, a foreigner and a subject of the Ottoman sultan-caliph. This panoramic story informs broader transregional and global developments during the steamship era, with important implications for how we make sense of subjecthood in the last Muslim empire and the legacy of religion in the Turkish Republic.


Email: kevorkian.center@nyu.edu
Telephone: (212) 998-8877
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