Tracing the origins of Sufism in India: the representation of Hinduism and Buddhism by late Ottoman Bektashi intellectuals

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ABSTRACT With the circulation of Western European works on the history of religion in the late Ottoman Empire, Ottoman intellectuals were confronted with the question of how to situate their religious tradition in global religious history and how to relate it to other religions. The article discusses this question from the perspective of late Ottoman Sufi intellectuals and their reception of Buddhism and Hinduism, focusing on the early 20th-century accounts of the Bektashi Ahmed Rıfkı (1884–1935). Ahmed Rıfkı constructed a teleological history of Sufism, which he explicitly understood as a religious tradition transcending Islamic boundaries. With a particular focus on the ontology of vahdet-i-vücûd (unity of being), he saw the origin of this teaching, and thus of Sufism, in India—albeit at a teleologically underdeveloped level. Acquiring knowledge of Buddhism and Hinduism exclusively from French, English and German texts, the transfer of knowledge took place in a triangle between India, Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Although informed by Western European approaches, the reception went beyond mere imitation, as Sufi intellectuals such as Ahmed Rıfkı selected, translated and adapted the knowledge conveyed in Western European texts according to their ideas, needs and interests.