An ‘Islamist’ intellectual in the late Ottoman Empire: Ali Suavi

Abstract

Contrary to the general tendency in intellectual history, where a past intellectual is usually portrayed as having a coherent thought system with minor deviations, there are various and even contradictory depictions of Ali Suavi. He was a Turkist intellectual and revolutionary, sacrificing himself to stop Abdulhamid II before the latter turned into a ‘despot’, but also an Islamist with political views akin to those of the Muslim modernists, responsible for the later regional instability in the Middle East. This article argues that, instead of a selective reading of his work to fit into one of these portrayals, a better understanding of Ali Suavi’s thought should benefit from intellectual context. It aims at reading his history of the ‘Turks’ intellectual work’ and discussion of sovereignty and ideal government as part of an ongoing conversation with the European intellectual context. This way, his praising of Turkish history and language does not merely point out a nascent Turkism, nor does his utilization of Islamic terminology and history in his formulation of ideal government only signal his Islamism, but rather they prove his conscious engagement with the European intellectual context and attempt at appropriating and translating European ideas for the late Ottoman context.