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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 August 2022
This article brings together insights from efforts to develop a global history of science and recent historical and sociological studies on the relations between science and religion. Using the case of the late Ottoman Empire as an example, it argues that ‘science and religion’ can be seen as a debate that travelled globally in the nineteenth century, generating new conceptualizations of both science and religion in many parts of the world. In their efforts to counter arguments that represented Islam as the enemy of science and progress, young Ottoman intellectuals wrote many texts addressing a specific European author, or an imagined, broad European audience in the mid- to late nineteenth century. These texts described a ‘science-friendly’ Islam of which not only Europeans but also ‘ignorant Muslims’ were unaware. Using examples from the Ottoman press, the article demonstrates how this effort involved separating Islam from the lived reality of Muslims, transforming the religion essentially into a text that referred to scientific facts or that instructed adherents to appreciate science. In their contributions to the debate on science and religion, these young intellectuals thus also defined themselves as the legitimate interpreters of Islam in the ‘age of science’.
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17 Yalçınkaya, op. cit. (10), refers to these changes as well, but focuses primarily on domestic political concerns due to which the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II gave support to authors of texts demonstrating that Islam and science were in harmony.
18 See Benjamin Fortna, ‘Islamic morality in late Ottoman “secular” schools’, International Journal of Middle East Studies (2000) 3, pp. 369–93, on the need to underline that this was but a ‘relative’ secularism.
19 On these changes see Amit Bein, Ottoman Ulema, Turkish Republic: Agents of Change and Guardians of Tradition, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011; Selçuk Akşin Somel, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 1839–1908: Islamization, Autocracy, and Discipline, Leiden: Brill, 2001.
20 Hayreddin, ‘Muvazene-i Din ü Akl’, Basiret, 29 Kanunusani 1286 (10 February 1871), pp. 2–3.
21 Untitled, Basiret, 22 Zilkade 1289 (21 January 1873), p. 3.
22 Samipaşazade Abdülbaki, ‘Maarif’, Tercüman-ı Hakikat, 3 Zilhicce 1298 (27 October 1881), pp. 2–3.
23 ‘Mekteb-i Tıbbiye-i Şahane talebesinden birkaç zat imzalarıyle matbaamıza tebliğ olunan varakanın aynıdır’, Tercüman-ı Hakikat, 13 Ramazan 1298 (9 August 1881), pp. 2–3.
24 Abdülbaki, op. cit. (22).
25 Cemaliye Hanım, ‘Varaka’, Tercüman-ı Hakikat, 3 Safer 1298 (5 January 1881), p. 3. Worth noting is the availability of this option to female Muslim students, unlike the medreses.
26 ‘Varaka’, Basiret, 14 Zilhicce 1289 (12 February 1873), p. 2.
27 ‘Redd-i Batıl ve Isbat-ı Hak’, Tercüman-ı Hakikat, 14 Zilhicce 1298 (7 November 1881), pp. 2–3.
28 Islam as the main cause of the backwardness of Muslim peoples was the dominant, but not the only, representation in European texts of the nineteenth century. See Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; Clinton Bennett, Victorian Images of Islam, London: Grey Seal, 1992.
29 Ahmed Midhat, ‘Sema II’, Tercüman-ı Hakikat, 24 Rebiulevvel 1301 (23 January 1884), p. 3.
30 Şinasi, Müntehabat-ı Eş’arım, 2nd edn, Istanbul: Tasvir-i Efkar, 1870 (first published 1862), p. 84.
31 On the elimination of Israiliyat in contemporary commentaries on the Qur'an see Roberto Tottoli, Biblical Prophets in the Qur'an and Muslim Literature, New York: Routledge, 2002. This radical reversal in attitudes toward Israiliyat damaged the traditionally taken-for-granted connection between Islam and the other Abrahamic religions to a significant extent, according to Ismail Kara in ‘“Unuttuklarını Hatırla”: Şerh ve Haşiye Meselesine Dair Birkaç Not’, Dîvân: Disiplinlerarası Çalışmalar Dergisi (2010) 28, pp. 1–67, 63.
32 Anonymous, ‘İslamiyet ve Medeniyet’, Vakit, 12 March 1878, p. 3.
33 Ernest Renan, ‘Islamism and science’, in Bryan Turner (ed.), Readings in Orientalism, London: Routledge, 2000 (first published 1883), pp. 199–217.
34 On Renan and the responses to his speech see Dücane Cündioğlu, ‘Ernest Renan ve “reddiyeler” bağlamında İslâm-bilim tartışmalarına bibliyografik bir katkı’, Dîvân: Disiplinlerarası Çalışmalar Dergisi (1996) 2, pp. 1–94; B. Harun Küçük, ‘Islam, Christianity and the conflict thesis’, in Thomas Dixon, Geoffrey Cantor and Stephen Pumfrey (eds.), Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 111–30; Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din ‘al-Afghani’, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
35 François Georgeon, ‘Un positiviste en orient au XIXe siècle: Charles Mismer, la Turquie et l'Islam’, in Des ottomans aux turcs: Naissance d'une nation, Istanbul: Isis, 1995, pp. 125–58.
36 Charles Mismer, ‘L'Islamisme et la science’, La philosophie positive (1883) 30, pp. 437–54, 445.
37 Mismer, op. cit. (36), p. 452.
38 Mismer, op. cit. (36), p. 453.
39 On 20–21 and 22 May 1883.
40 Ahmed Midhat, ‘Islamiyet ve Fünûn’, Tercüman-ı Hakikat, 30 May 1883, p. 2.
41 Midhat, op. cit. (40).
42 Ahmed Midhat, ‘Islamiyet ve Fünûn’, Tercüman-ı Hakikat, 1 June 1883, p. 2.
43 Midhat, op. cit. (40), p. 2.
44 Midhat, op. cit. (40), p. 2.
45 Midhat, op. cit. (42), p. 2.
46 Renan was neither a proponent of radical scientism nor, as Ahmed Midhat thought, a Christian zealot. See Priest, Robert D., The Gospel According to Renan: Reading, Writing, and Religion in Nineteenth-Century France, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015CrossRefGoogle Scholar. To Renan, the Gospel of Jesus was not dogmatic in any respect, as opposed to the religion constructed by Mohammed.
47 Ansari, Zafar Ishaq, ‘Scientific exegesis of the Qur'an’, Journal of Qur'anic Studies (2001) 3, pp. 91–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stolz, op. cit. (6), pp. 200–4.
48 Said, ‘Islamiyet ve Fünûn’, reproduced in Tercüman-ı Hakikat, 6 Şevval 1300 (10 August 1883), p. 2.
49 Swidler, Ann, ‘Culture in action: Symbols and strategies’, American Sociological Review (1986) 51, pp. 273–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bonikowski, Bart, ‘Nationalism in settled times’, Annual Review of Sociology (2016) 42, pp. 427–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
50 Anonymous, ‘Arablar’, Saadet, 12 Rebiulevvel 1302 (30 December 1884), pp. 2–3.
51 Gustave Le Bon, La Civilization des Arabes, vols. 1 and 2, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1884, p. 104. Also see Yalçinkaya, op. cit. (10), on Ahmed Midhat's transformation of John William Draper into an ally.
52 Note again that many among the new intellectuals had received some religious education in public institutions or from tutors. They could also be conversant with Sufi ideas and practices. It would be more accurate to see them as new claimants to authority in matters pertaining to religion than as adversaries of the medrese, or men alienated from religion.
53 See, for instance, Namık Kemal, ‘Terakki’, Ibret, 14 Tesrinievvel 1288 (26 October 1872), pp. 1–2; Kemal, ‘Ibret’, Ibret, 5 Haziran 1288 (17 June 1872), pp. 1–2; Kemal, ‘Sınaat ve ticaretimiz’, İbret, 8 Teşrinisani 1288 (20 November 1872), pp. 1–2; Kemal, ‘Sa'y’, Cüzdan, Zilhicce 1289 (February 1873), pp. 2–5; Ahmed Midhat, Iktisat Metinleri (ed. Erdogan Erbay), Konya: Cizgi, 2005. For a detailed analysis of late nineteenth-century Ottoman debates about how to generate a ‘capitalist spirit’ among Muslims see Kilincoglu, Deniz, Economics and Capitalism in the Ottoman Empire, New York: Routledge, 2015CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
54 On the issue of terminology see Samer Akkach (ed.), Ilm: Science, Religion, and Art in Islam, Adelaide: Adelaide University Press, 2019; M. Alper Yalçınkaya, Learned Patriots: Debating Science, State, and Society in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015; Kenan Tekin, ‘Reforming categories of science and religion in the late Ottoman Empire’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2016. An important study of the blurry boundaries among these terms in late Ottoman texts, with numerous examples of how Ottoman authors themselves were aware of the inconsistent uses of the terms, is Ismail Kara, ‘Modernleşme dönemi Türkiyesi'nde “ulûm,” “fünûn” ve “sanat” kavramlarının algılanışı üzerine birkaç not’, in Kara, Din ve Modernleşme Arasında: Çağdaş Türk Düşüncesinin Meseleleri, Istanbul: Dergah, 2003, pp. 75–109.
55 Note that these texts referred primarily to the situation in nineteenth-century Istanbul and to what the authors saw as the center of the Ottoman realms. Courses on astronomy, medicine and mathematics had commonly been part of medrese curricula primarily before the eighteenth century, and the association between the medrese and strictly traditional Islamic scholarship was a relatively novel phenomenon. On this as well as the dynamic ways in which branches of knowledge had been defined in Muslim societies see Murphy, Jane, ‘Islamicate knowledge systems: circulation, rationality, and politics’, in Salvatore, Armando (ed.), The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2018, pp. 479–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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60 Yalçınkaya, Alper, ‘The “harmony thesis” in the Turkish media, 1950–1970’, in Lightman, Bernard (ed.), Rethinking History, Science, and Religion: An Exploration of Conflict and the Complexity Principle, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019, pp. 129–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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