ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

An Ottoman Sufi’s Interpretation of ‘New Astronomy’

• In Event: Translating Technologies and Images: a Context for Textual Knowledge-Making across Early Modern Cultural Spheres

English Abstract

How was natural scientific knowledge of European origin received in the Ottoman Empire? Using İbrâhîm Ḥaḳḳı Erzurumî (d. 1780)’s encyclopaedia Maʻrifetnâme as a case study, this paper explores the ways in which ‘new’ astronomy from Europe was translated and localized in the Ottoman context. It argues that Sufi scholars were receptive, productive thinkers who played an instrumental role in the production and popularization of unfamiliar, novel claims about nature. This paper shows how İbrâhîm Ḥaḳḳı incorporated Copernicus’ heliocentric views into his intellectual project of cultivating morality and piety. Natural scientific knowledge of foreign origin was legitimized through a culture-bound process of translation that re-articulated existing Sufi concepts and imageries. It reveals that İbrâhîm Ḥaḳḳı’s project not only exemplifies the disciplinary entanglement between theology, Sufism and natural science within the Ottoman intellectual landscape, but also the role of texts in European languages in the making of Ottoman Sufism in a trans-regional context.

Author

• Xiwen Yang, University of California, Davis