Ambivalent Subjects: The Ottoman State and Its Non-Sunni Muslim Population. Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

ABSTRACT This thematic issue brings together articles on non-Sunni Muslim communities in the Ottoman Empire between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on case studies from Bayrami-Melami, Kızılbaş, Nusayri and Twelver Shii contexts, the issue investigates the different modes in which the Ottoman state and these parts of its population encountered and perceived each other. At times severely persecuting them, the state also applied other, more accommodative measures towards these groups, which Sharia-minded Muslims may regard as ‘heretics’. This thematic issue explores the dynamics of these different relations between the state and these ambivalent subjects. Focusing on specific constellations of time and place and using a variety of sources from both local and central administration archives, the articles explore the historical context of the diverse policies of persecution and accommodation, collaboration and resistance that were implemented. The overall argument is for a perspective that historicizes Ottoman politics of difference in order to go beyond essentialist notions of timeless ‘heretics’ on the one hand and a seemingly monolithic, Sunni Muslim body politic on the other.