Islamist Thinkers in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic.

• Author: Karabela, Mehmet
• Position: Book review

By Ahmet Seyhun

Leiden: Brill, 2014, 204 pages, $120.00, ISBN: 9789004280908.

Reviewed by Mehmet Karabela, Queen's University

Late Ottoman intellectual history, especially the nineteenth century, was seen by Bernard Lewis (in his The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 1961) and Niyazi Berkes (in his Aristotelian teleological work The Development of Secularism in Modern Turkey, 1964) as a "natural evolution" towards a "new" Republican Turkey leading up to the modernization/secularization of the country. Accordingly, political scientists and Orientalists in Europe and North America have commonly presented a history of Islamism outside of Ottoman experience, starting with the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood Hasan al-Banna of Egypt (d. 1949) in the early twentieth century, and respectively, Islamic modernism beginning in Egypt with Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) during the nineteenth century. European and North American academics, including Brian Silverstein, Amit Bein, and Susan Gunasti among others, have only very recently turned their attention to the late Ottoman ulema and Islamist intellectuals, mainly in the wake of AK Party's success in the post-Kemalist/secular Turkey. However, up until now, there was no reliable comprehensive work on late nine-teenth century Ottoman/Turkish Islamist thought in English. It is in this context that Ahmet Seyhun's work Islamist Thinkers in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic proves to be a significant contribution to a vital but long-neglected chapter in the history of Islamism.

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The book presents English translations of thirteen important Islamist thinkers' key texts, from Said Halim Pasa to the famous Qur'an commentator Elmalili Hamdi (Yazir) including the most prominent figures since the late nineteenth century, such as Mustafa Sabri, Said Nursi, Babanzade Ahmed Naim, Sehbenderzade Ahmed Hilmi, Seyhulislam Musa Kazim, Iskilipli Mehmed Atif, Mehmed Akif Ersoy, Izmirli Ismail Hakki, Mehmed Ali Ayni, Mehmed Seyyid Celebizade and Mehmed Semseddin Gunaltay. Seyhun's work serves as an English reader on Ottoman Islamist thought, although it does not cover the same period as Ismail Kara's three-volume work in Turkish Turkiye'de Islamcilik Dusuncesi published in 1986. Seyhun first provides a historical introduction to better situate the Islamist thinkers in the Ottoman and broader Islamic intellectual contexts. In his introductory chapter, Seyhun argues that both Islamic modernism and...