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This article examines the views and place of Izmirli Ismail Hakkı in late Ottoman thought. A prominent religious thinker, Hakkı took part in lively debates in Istanbul. He and other moderate religious thinkers were against the defenders of mere positivism in the process of modernization of Ottoman thought in the modern period. By focusing on Hakkı, the article aims to highlight the significance of central Ottoman scholars in modern Islamic thought and the debates of modernization. It pays special attention to Hakkı's attempt to reconstruct Islamic philosophical theology with a new kalam book and to his critical responses to 19th–century materialist thought, as well as to his opinions regarding other Ottoman reform projects.

Based upon research undertaken in Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, and the Crimea, this article consists of three principal and interconnected fields of inquiry. The first focuses upon changing Russian and Ottoman policies toward the immigration of Russian Muslims to the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the 19th century. The second examines questions that complicate the historiographical narrative surrounding this immigration, including issues such as Muslim return immigration to Russia and the retention of Russian citizenship by Muslim immigrants in the Ottoman Empire. The third examines the increasingly contested nature of citizenship and its role in the relations between Russian Muslims and the Russian and Ottoman bureaucracies. This section investigates battles between Ottoman and Russian bureaucrats who assert authority over Muslims of ambiguous citizenship status and the strategies deployed by Russian Muslims to take advantage of this ambiguity in their dealings with the bureaucracies of both empires.