Abstract:

In Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought, Hü- seyin Yılmaz offers an evaluation of Ottoman political thought through the six- teenth century. He takes the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate at the hand of the Mongols in the thirteenth century as a pivot. This event, he argues, decisively shaped the character of later Ottoman political thought, rendering obsolete tra- ditional juristic conceptions of political order and clearing the way for new in- terpretations, the most important of which was based on Sufi metaphysics. Sufi thought inspired many who thought and wrote about politics, Sufi and non-Sufi alike, giving rise to a distinctive understanding of political order that redefined the concept of the caliphate. The caliphate, traditionally conceived as an insti- tution representing the rule of Arab Qurayshi caliphs and the political order in- stituted by the Prophet Muhammad, was reconceived as the representation of God on earth by morally and spiritually perfect human beings. Though Ottoman political thought was never monolithic, Yılmaz argues that this Sufistic view of the caliphate was a common thread that united the political thinkers of the age.

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