From Shahāda to ʿaqīda: Conversion To Islam, Catechisation And Sunnitisation In Sixteenth­ Century Ottoman Rumeli

Tijana Krstić*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to Book/Report typesChapterpeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

In a recent article, Derin Terzioğlu introduced a heretofore unknown seventeenth-century catechetical work in Ottoman Turkish by a certain Nushi al-Nasıhi. Hailing most probably from the Ottoman European domains (Rumeli) and writing in roughly the 1630s, Nushi lamented the state of basic religious instruction in the empire and blamed the woes of the Ottoman state on insufficient knowledge of faith and on laxity in the observance of religious laws. He went on to outline a detailed plan of how the condition should be remedied: the authorities should send out town criers to all neighbourhoods and announce that from that point on everyone over the age of seven regardless of their social status would be examined on their knowledge of ‘faith and Islam and ablution and ritual prayer’ (īmāndan ve İslāmdan ve ābdest ve namāzdan suʾāl idüp).1 He further enjoined that those who fail to show satisfactory knowledge should be ‘publicly scolded, administered discretionary punishment or evicted from the neighbourhood’
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIslamisation Comparative Perspectives from History
EditorsA. C. S. Peacock
PublisherEdinburgh University Press
Pages296-314
Number of pages19
ISBN (Electronic)9781474417136
ISBN (Print)9781474417129
DOIs
StatePublished - 2017

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