Introduction: revisiting the history of Muslim Turkish society
In March 1937, İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi, a publishing house owned by an Iranian family, began placing advertisements in newspapers. The initial adverts were brief, featuring the title “Kerbela Vakası: Ali, Hasan ve Hüseyin,” but by April, the advertisements became more detailed. Under the title “Kerbela Vakası,” the description expanded to include “revolutions and conflicts before and after Muhammad,” followed by the question “What is Alevism, and how did it begin? Ziya Şakir’s series, published in the Tan newspaper, is being printed as a book in instalments.” These advertisements also appeared in the publisher’s Mevlid books that were compilations of texts without an editor’s name. While the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) criticized the Mevlid books for being “superstitious,” it considered the Karbala books to be “Shia propaganda.” The Turkish government banned all these books in 1944, acting on Diyanet’s opinion. These events raise several key questions for Turkish society and the history of Islam in Turkey. What is the connection between these issues, Alevism, and the broader category of “Turkish folk Islam”? Why and how do the “folk” books of this publisher and Ziya Şakir (1883–1959), “the first great author of oral history of the Republican era” (Birinci Reference Birinci2010, 230), “matter”?Footnote 1 What can the content of these books tell us about the religiosity of Sunni and Alevi Muslims? And finally, how does their ban relate to the politics of secularism, global connections, and the construction of “correct” Islam?
In addressing these questions, this article revisits the history of Muslim Turkish society, questioning its essentialist portrayal as a “religious society” narrowly defined through Sunni Islamic doctrines. While the dominant paradigm of Turkish modernity – the secular state–religious society or the state–society binary – has been scrutinized,Footnote 2 the religious dimension of Turkish society remains understudied. Religiosity is usually measured through practices such as mosque attendance, fasting, and daily prayers, rendering Alevis often categorized as secular. In other words, although Muslim Turkish society comprises both Sunnis and Alevis,Footnote 3 its religiosity is largely equated with Sunni Islam.Footnote 4 I argue that, by situating these books, their publisher, and Ziya Şakir within the broader political and religious history of Turkey, and within the global context of the early Cold War, we can move beyond this Sunni-centric notion of Turkey’s “religious society,” a task long overdue.
This task relates to both the othering of Alevis as heterodox (Dressler Reference Dressler2015), and the broader category of “Turkish folk Islam,” put forward by the influential historian Fuad Köprülü in the early twentieth century. Köprülü established a dominant historiographical framework for the religious history of Anatolia, situating Alevis within this category. The umbrella term Alevi is undoubtedly modern, and in this article, I use it to refer to both Kizilbash-Alevis and the Sufi path of Bektashis. Recent scholarship has challenged the Köprülü paradigm in relation to Alevis (Dressler Reference Dressler2013; Karakaya-Stump Reference Karakaya-Stump2020), but less attention has been paid to its impact on Sunni Muslims and its treatment in the Turkish Republic. Köprülü had constructed the category of Turkish folk Islam as heterodox, non-Sunni, Alevi, oral, and rural with saint veneration. Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, one of Köprülü’s foremost followers, divided this category into two, claiming that it is heterodox (non-Sunni) as Alevism, but also has a Sunni dimension, with a notable overlap between the two – the veneration of saints (Ocak Reference Ocak2010, 171–189).
In this article, I argue that alongside saint veneration, key components of both Sunni and Alevi folk Islam were praising Nur Muhammad – a divine light – and love of Ahl al-Bayt – a deep devotion for the family of the Prophet.Footnote 5 I introduce a new concept, “Islam in Turkish,” both to capture these shared elements and to replace the modern category of Turkish folk Islam, as well as to move beyond the “political concept” of Turkish Islam (Dressler Reference Dressler, Tee, Vicini and Dorroll2026). I contend that analyzing the everyday use of the books of İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi substantiates this argument, lays the foundations of this new concept, and enables us to explore the history of the religiosity of society in its complexity. Ocak suggests approaching this history through the work of two theologians, Mustafa Arslan and Hatice Arpaguş, whose limitations I will discuss below. Instead, I propose that historians, too, must reclaim this field by shifting methodology and incorporating these books as primary material. Why are Republican or Diyanet documents recognized as legitimate archival sources, while the texts referred in these sources such as these books, akin to the epics of Ali, remain overlooked in terms of their content, significance, and everyday use? (Dinç Reference Dinç2025b, 327) This methodological intervention is especially pressing given the limitations of existing Republican archival resources (Dinç Reference Dinç2021, 14–15, 217–219). By adopting this shift, we can write the religious history of Turkey from a new perspective, reach different conclusions, and develop innovative questions for future research.
To achieve this aim, I draw on the contributions of material religion approach as a complementary method, treating folk books as religious media. As Meyer suggests, humans depend on media in searching for the “divine” (Meyer Reference Meyer2011). I contend that as religious media, Mevlid, Karbala, and Ebâ Muslim books made the prophet Muhammad and Ahl al-Bayt “accessible,” “tangible,” and “sense-able” in the world in oral, pictorial, and scriptural forms. This perspective allows us to include the publisher, editor, and author of books as mediators, as well as the users, to understand how the latter as readers or listeners used these books in their “religious world-making” at the micro-level (Meyer Reference Meyer2012, 30). In this article, I use Republican and Diyanet archival documents, newspapers, and folk books as primary sources. I worked on-site at the Republican and Diyanet archives in Ankara in 2013 during my PhD research. I accessed newspapers through the collections of the Atatürk Kitaplığı in İstanbul and have been collecting folk books over the past three years through fieldwork in second-hand bookshops. These books form a growing database I am building on İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi, which continues to expand as I add new items. To contextualize these sources, I also draw on relevant secondary and scholarly literature to trace their roots in lithographs and manuscripts and to explain their use and meaning for society.
Focusing on the treatment of these books by the Turkish government and Diyanet also reveals that what was excluded from “correct” Islam were overlapping aspects of Sunni and Alevi religiosity. Put differently, Köprülü’s discursive construction of “correct” Islam (Arabic, scriptural, urban, based on teachings of ulema) was followed by political efforts to eliminate these elements from Mevlid books as superstition or to exclude the stories of Karbala and Ebâ Müslim from the religious sphere as Shia propaganda. This was part and parcel of Turkish secularization, yet it has not been recognized in the literature on secularism, because the narrow definition of the religious as Sunni Islamic has obscured the extensive publishing activity of folk books since the early 1930s. It has been argued that “religious media” flourished after 1945, with the loosening of secular policies and the coming to power of the Democrat Party in 1950 (Brockett Reference Brockett2011, 97). Rather, as I will show, during this period the understanding of “religious media” and “religious Turkish society” as Sunni Islamic was consolidated through global entanglements.
I will begin by analyzing the shortcomings of the literature on Sunni folk Islam and position my contribution through the concept of Islam in Turkish, with a focus on the central role of Nur Muhammad and love of the Ahl al-Bayt. I will then examine İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi and its Mevlid publications, tracing their sources, analyzing their contents, and assessing their significance for Islam in Turkish. The next section will turn to Ziya Şakir’s narratives on Karbala and Eba Müslim, illuminating how love of Ahl al-Bayt and the memory of Karbala shaped this religiosity. The fourth part will investigate the political management of these books and stories by the Turkish state and Islamist actors. Here, I also engage with the works of the influential scholars Bernard Lewis and Howard A. Reed, two of the many who wrote on “religious revival” in Turkey during the 1950s. Their interpretations of what constitutes “religious” are indicative in consolidating the category of the religious as synonymous with Sunni Islam. Finally, I will return to the concept of Islam in Turkish in light of the evidence presented and in relation with non-Muslims and Kurds. I will discuss its potential contribution to recent global debates on “what is Islam?” (Ahmed Reference Ahmed2016) and the “ambiguity” of Islam (Bauer Reference Bauer2011).
Moving beyond “Turkish folk Islam” to “Islam in Turkish”
Ocak argues that Turkish folk Islam was influenced by “remnants” of previous religions of Turks, and that it was “surrounded by superstition” (Ocak Reference Ocak2010, 112). The works of the two theologians he considers crucial for its history regarding Sunni Muslims reveal the contradictions inherent in the historiography of Islam dominant in Republican Turkey. Arslan, a theologian of the sociology of religion, focuses on popular religion and offers an analysis of the cult of saints in the Republic. He argues that this “Turkish popular religiosity” is widespread in Turkish society, particularly among Alevis (Arslan Reference Arslan2004).Footnote 6 Arpaguş, a theologian of Islamic kalām specializing in Ottoman traditional Islam, bases her research on the Islam of the Ottoman folk on texts written by Sufis such as Muhammediye and Ahmediye, which are considered “popular” religious books widely read in Ottoman society (Arpaguş Reference Arpaguş2015). Thus, alongside the web of distinctions such as Turkish–Ottoman and folk–society, a methodological divide also emerges: Turkish popular religiosity is primarily explored through rituals and oral traditions, whereas Ottoman folk Islam is analyzed through texts. In other words, Ocak’s category of Turkish Sunni folk Islam is divided into two binary subcategories through orality and scripture, mapped not explicitly onto an urban–rural distinction, but rather onto Turkishness and Ottoman-ness.
According to these scholars, these two subcategories include superstitious and heterodox elements: saint veneration for the former, and the mythological praise of the Prophet through Nur Muhammad – described as “a transcendent light, like the sun, around which everything created revolves” (Schimmel Reference Schimmel1964) – for the latter. Both categories, however, are not necessarily heterodox, if not orthodox. Orthodox Islam for these scholars corresponds to Köprülü’s (and Diyanet’s) notion of “correct” Sunni Islam. All other categories are evaluated against this standard through a theological lens, but at the same time, “deviations” from it have been incorporated into Sunni Islam in Turkey through empirical selectivity: saint veneration is popular but non-heterodox as a continuity of Turks from Central Asia;Footnote 7 likewise, Sufism is folk but non-heterodox as a continuity of Ottoman Turks. The exceptions in this narrative are love of Ahl al-Bayt and messianism, both of which are relegated to Alevism (Ocak Reference Ocak2011, 384–385).
In fact, the categories of Ottoman folk Islam and Turkish popular religiosity are not sufficient to explain religiosity as a continuity from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic. Rather than using such etic categories for the history of Turkey, we should, as the historian Ahmet T. Karamustafa suggests, “turn our gaze directly to vernacular Islam” in Anatolia (Karamustafa Reference Karamustafa and Mir-Kasimov2014, 330). The publishers, editors, authors, readers, and listeners of the books I examine were, in various ways, descendants of Turkish speakers who were the “actual architects” of culture in Anatolia “during their Islamization between the tenth and fifteenth centuries and beyond” (Karamustafa Reference Karamustafa and Mir-Kasimov2014, 329). They also constituted the later audience for the distinctive “literature of Rum” in Turkish that developed in Anatolia and the Balkans from 1450 to 1600 (Kuru Reference Kuru, Faroqhi and Fleet2012). My intervention in the field is therefore historical, grounded in the religious significance of Mevlid, Kerbela Vakası, and Ebâ Müslim books for Turkish society as a whole. This dimension is largely overlooked in the literature, as a result of what I would suggest, paraphrasing Kırmızı, Turkish historians’ “blindness to religion” (Kırmızı Reference Kırmızı2019, 4–5).
The Mevlid, a poem by the Ottoman Sufi Süleyman Çelebi (d. 1422) on the birth of the Prophet, has received increasing scholarly attention in the last two decades (Çulfaz Reference Çulfaz2023). Although Mevlid ceremonies have been examined under the rubric of Turkish folk Islam or popular religiosity (Kurt and Yanmış Reference Kurt, Yanmış, Kemikli and Çetin2010), research on Mevlid books has been limited, often describing them as folk books (Özalp Reference Özalp2014). There exists a substantial body of work in Turkish in the form of manuscripts and lithographs, not only on Ebâ Müslim, but also on the Karbala battle in the form of stories and novels, including poetic Maktel-i Hüseyins (Albayrak Reference Albayrak1994; Uzun Reference Uzun2020). However, these works, too, are classified either as folk literature or as part of high Sufi literary traditions.
Seen in this light, my findings largely correlate with the religiosity of Turkish speakers in Anatolia before the sixteenth century, when there was no clear differentiation between Sunni and Alevi beliefs. Religiosity was characterized by reverence for Ali, love of Ahl al-Bayt, and in relation to these, mourning for Karbala and the cult of Ebâ Müslim (Yıldırım Reference Yıldırım2014). Recent contributions to Ottoman studies have shown that this kind of religiosity remained an essential part of Ottoman Islam even after the Safavid conflict (Erginbaş Reference Erginbaş2017; Terzioğlu Reference Terzioğlu, Krstić and Terzioğlu2022). Sezer-Aydınlı’s (Reference Sezer Aydınlı2022) research on the collective reading of Ebâ Müslim and Hamzaname stories in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century İstanbul provides further evidence of its continuity. The epics of Ali, a genre that was widely published as folk books from the 1930s onwards, demonstrate that reverence of Ali continued as a fluidity between Alevis and Sunnis in the Republic (Dinç Reference Dinç2025b). Mevlid books demonstrate that love of Ahl al-Bayt likewise persisted among Sunnis. The Battle of Karbala that took place on October 10, 680 (10 Muharram) is particularly central to this religiosity. Hüseyin, the grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali and Fatma, was defeated and massacred by an army sent by the Umayyad caliph Yezid I. Ebâ Müslim Horasani (d. 755) later defeated the Umayyads and facilitated the transfer of the caliphate to the Abbasids. Stories of Ebâ Müslim in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu date to the twelfth century, and they were translated and rewritten by Turkish speakers from the fourteenth century onwards, transforming him into a hero who avenged the spilling of Hüseyin’s blood. In this respect, the books of Ziya Şakir complement this picture of continuity in the religiosity of Turkish speakers during the Republic.
However, Nur Muhammad, the key concept in understanding the Prophet’s meaning for the populace, is absent in this literature. According to this concept, Muhammad is not merely a prophet, but a primordial light created from the light of God, the first soul created by God and the ultimate reason for God’s creation of the universe (Demirci Reference Demirci1983). He was present as a prophet from the first moment of creation, even before Adam, embodying the divine perfection of a human being. A central theme of Sufi thought and Islamic cosmology, the idea of Nur Muhammad was systematized by Ibnü’l Arabi (d. 1240) and eloquently expressed in the poetry of numerous Turkish-speaking Sufis. A theologian of Sufism summarizes the centrality of this concept in the Mevlid text as follows:
Vesiletu’n-Necat is a book of miracles and wonders that carries the reader and listener into a spiritual realm of angels and marvels. … With Çelebi, it becomes possible to ascend to heaven and God with Muhammad (miraç). This text offers the reader and the listener a complete religious worldview, and its essence is Nur Muhammad (Uludağ Reference Uludağ, Kara and Kemikli2008, 201).
Nur Muhammad is also important for Alevis, a subject that has not received sufficient attention, as I elaborate below. Moreover, the prevalence of this concept in religious books has been treated as a “problem” by two theologians recommended by Ocak (Arslan Reference Arslan2009; Arpaguş Reference Arpaguş2015, 279–284). Along with Orientalist scholarship (Schimmel Reference Schimmel1964), their work framed Nur Muhammad as a deviation from “correct” Islam and from the Quran, particularly by classifying it as “Islamic mythology,” which, according to Ocak, constitutes “a neglected problematic of Islamic theology” (Ocak Reference Ocak2010, 95–122). Similarly, love of Ahl al-Bayt is cast as a “problem” of Shia influence (Arpaguş Reference Arpaguş2015, 277). As a historian, I am interested in linking the religiosity of early modern Anatolian Turkish speakers with that of their descendants, who later experienced religious modernization within the nation-state. By treating Ottoman book culture and folk literature (Öztürk Reference Öztürk2007) as a bridge connecting the religiosity of pre-Ottoman, Ottoman, and post-Ottoman Turkish speakers, we can establish a grounded framework for understanding continuity. We also know that orality and textuality in both the Empire and the Republic were closely intertwined, as demonstrated by communal reading assemblies that continued until the 1980s (Değirmenci Reference Değirmenci2011; Neumann Reference Neumann2005; Sezer-Aydınlı and Schick Reference Sezer-Aydınlı and Schick2023).
How can we define this religiosity without resorting to modern terms and categories? Given that all the books discussed in this article and their sources were written, read, or listened to in Turkish, I propose the term “Islam in Turkish,” drawing historical inspiration from Karamustafa (Reference Karamustafa and Mir-Kasimov2014). Conceptually, I find Dressler’s call to seek “non-binary concepts that are primarily descriptive and only secondarily explanatory” important for capturing the “inner-Islamic plurality” of Turkey’s history (Dressler Reference Dressler2013, 270). Meyer’s appeal for future studies of religion to “develop new critical terms … that allow for generalization without, however, being Eurocentric” (Meyer Reference Meyer2020, 117) is similarly valuable. Thus, I use Islam in Turkish not as an ethnic but as a linguistic framework “through the lens of the Turkish vernacular” (Karamustafa Reference Karamustafa and Mir-Kasimov2014, 330). My aim is not to introduce a new analytical category but to capture a vernacular form of religiosity rooted in Anatolia where Turkish functions as a sacred language.Footnote 8 This religiosity was circulating orally and in musical form and it is grounded in texts.
Praising Nur Muhammad
The history of book printing in the Turkish language using the Arabic script dates back to 1727 with the introduction of the first printing press (Neumann Reference Neumann and Benz2002). Following the Alphabet Reform of 1928, books began to be published in the Latin script. The role of non-Muslims in this history is better documented (Strauss Reference Strauss2003) than that of Iranians. Therefore, İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi represents a unique case. Hacı Kasım immigrated to İstanbul in 1860 and began working as a bookseller. He passed the business to his son, Naci Kasım, in 1901, and in 1910 Naci Kasım (Açıkel) began publishing books under the name Maarif Kitaphanesi. After a brief pause during World War I, he resumed publishing in the 1920s and became increasingly active after 1928 (Erken Reference Erken2020). In line with state support for this Republican reform, the publishing house became particularly active in printing folk books in the 1930s. In other words, Naci Kasım employed strict secularism as a pragmatic tool to sustain his business, publishing numerous folk books that were considered secular by the state until the mid-1940s, yet regarded as religious by the people, as exemplified clearly by the Mevlid books.
As one of the main publishing activities of İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi, these books included the Mevlid text of Süleyman Çelebi and texts on the death of the Prophet, as well as the death of Fatma, which recounts her grief following her father’s passing. They also contained epic stories such as Kesik Baş (severed head), Güvercin (pigeon), Geyik (deer), and Deve (camel), along with several Sufi poems. These texts originate from the fourteenth century,Footnote 9 and while all the epics focus on the miracles of the Prophet, the epics of Kesik Baş, Geyik, and Deve also feature Ali as a central character with his legendary sword Zülfikar. In earlier versions of these books, visual material was a key feature. Although they were removed in later reprints due to criticism by Diyanet, illustrations depicting angels in the Mevlid or the animals central to the epic stories were common. In fact, visuality was an essential part of Islam, as exemplified by the religious folk art of the mosques of Anatolia until the 1950s (Değirmenci Reference Değirmenci2020). As such, these books functioned as religious media, combining scriptural and visual elements to mediate between their users and the religious culture of fourteenth-century Turkish speakers.
Where did these books come from, and how were they compiled? Since they do not mention an editor, it is necessary to trace their sources back to the Ottoman publishing scene and book culture to answer these questions. The Mevlid book, published by Arvas (Reference Arvas2017) as a folk book based on a 1905 lithograph, corresponds to the Mevlid books of Maarif Kitaphanesi, including the Mevlid text, Prophet’s and Fatma’s death, and epic stories. Another lithograph, stored in the Bavaria State Library and printed in İstanbul in 1857 is similar (Bekar and Güngör Reference Bekar and Güngör2023). There are several older manuscripts as well (Kuzubaş Reference Kuzubaş2008), all of which are widely disseminated not only in Turkey (Öztürk Reference Öztürk2007, 407–409) but also abroad.Footnote 10 Some manuscripts contained Ali’s epics in addition to Çelebi’s Mevlid and the death of Fatma (Mattei Reference Mattei2004, 7), while others contained only the epic stories (Aslan Reference Aslan2006). Certain Sufi poems were also included in many of these manuscripts and lithographs, mirroring the content of the Maarif Kitaphanesi Mevlid books. These types of books were also common in the death registers of Ottoman booksellers (sahaf) from the seventeenth century (Erünsal Reference Erünsal2013, 65–66, 265). It appears that the compiler of the Mevlid books was knowledgeable about Ottoman book culture and drew upon multiple lithographs and manuscripts scattered throughout the Empire. More importantly, the Mevlid books and their sources were all written in Turkish. As such, the publisher Naci Kasım and the editor(s) served as intermediaries between the Empire and the Republic, bridging the continuity of book culture in Turkish.
The content of the texts in these books also reveals important details of Turkish history. Both the Mevlid and the epics were composed in the meter of “high” Divan poetry (aruz), and there were several poems by Sufis or poets with “high culture,” exemplified by Niyazi Mısri (d. 1694) and Fuzuli (d. 1556). These books demonstrate a fluidity, rather than a rigid boundary, between folk and elite literary culture or religion. Of particular importance is the prevalence of Nur Muhammad in the Mevlid text and the poems. It can be argued that, by reading and listening to Mevlid and the Sufi poetry in these books, the sophisticated concept of Nur Muhammad of high Sufism travelled vernacularly among the population. It transcended belief in the sense of believing in Muhammad’s prophecy and became an embodied experience, enabling one to be embraced by the primordial light of Muhammad and to sense his experience of miraç. Furthermore, the Mevlid text contains detailed descriptions of the extraordinary beauty of the physical features of the Prophet, such as his eyes, nose, lips, tongue, nails, hair, and sweat, Nur (light) of his face, rendering him tangible in the world. Çelebi combines these characteristics with miracles, such as having no shadow, splitting the moon with his finger, enabling the mute to speak and the blind to see (Öztürk Reference Öztürk2021, xv). He also recounts miraculous interactions between the Prophet and the natural world: the moon descending and shaking his cradle, water flowing from his finger, animals speaking to him, stones speaking in his palm, and trees prostrating themselves before him (Öztürk Reference Öztürk2021, xvi).
In other words, the material world was not opposed to but constituted an indispensable aspect of the enchanted and miraculous Islamic religiosity articulated in Turkish, centered on Muhammad. This is evident not only in the epics of these books but also in the texts discussed in the study of Arpaguş (Reference Arpaguş2015). Praising Muhammad in this context involved more than reciting Quranic verses in Arabic; it meant accessing him through words in Turkish. My point is not that Arabic was unimportant. Listening to the Quran has always been a common ritual, memorizing certain verses is highly valued, and possessing the Quran at home as a sacred object remains part of this religiosity. Nor am I suggesting that the five pillars of Islam were less important to Sunnis; indeed, references to these pillars, especially to the namaz, appear throughout the epic texts and poems. Rather, I argue that this form of religiosity extends far beyond normative Sunni Islamic religiosity, which is often defined through the five pillars or framed by the “correct” Islam of Köprülü and Diyanet – a framework also shared by Ocak, Arslan, and Arpaguş.
Of particular importance regarding Alevis is the relationship between Muhammad and Ali through the concept of Nur. For Alevis, Ali and Muhammad are created from the Nur of God and are considered “two inseparable halves of a cosmic entity” emanating from this light (Karakaya-Stump Reference Karakaya-Stump2020, 4). In other words, while for Alevis, Muhammad and Ali are present in the Nur of God, for Sunnis the Nur of Muhammad prevails. Similarly, Sunnis highly revere Ali, even in Alevi terms, as will be discussed below, but unlike Alevis, they do not regard him as the embodiment of the perfect human being; rather he is seen as the holy helper of Muhammad with miraculous powers, prevailing over the three caliphs.
To what extent do these two different understandings of the Nur of God in relation to Muhammad and Ali bring Alevi and Sunni religiosity closer is a complex question. The literature on Alevis tends to emphasize Ali’s predominance over Muhammad, and the limited scholarship explicitly focusing on Muhammad’s meaning and role for Alevis is produced by theologians based on Alevi texts, without comparing them to Sunni texts (Üzüm Reference Üzüm2009).
However, we find a clue in a poem by the leading Alevi poet Kul Himmet, identifying Muhammad with Nur, and notably, with the same miracle mentioned by Süleyman Çelebi in his Mevlid text, that he had no shadow (Erbay Reference Erbay1994, 62). It seems that certain poetic phrases and motifs have traveled between Alevis and Sunnis. The extent to which Nur Muhammad represents an overlap between them constitutes a promising line of research for further investigation.
The commonality of this religiosity is evidenced by the multiple reprints of the Mevlid books by İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi,Footnote 11 as well as by their numerous lithographs and manuscripts (Öztürk Reference Öztürk2007, 407–411). This may explain why the publishing house did not advertise them in the newspapers. According to Benekay’s research, conducted during his travels in the late 1950s to determine which Mevlid texts were recited at Mevlid ceremonies, it was not the books containing only Süleyman Çelebi’s Mevlid (muhtasar) that were widely read. Instead, the Mevlid books (musahhah), such as those published by Maarif Kitaphanesi, were common (Benekay Reference Benekay1964). It should also be noted that folk books were widely distributed in Anatolia by itinerant booksellers (Dinç Reference Dinç2025b, 332–333). Mevlid and epic stories circulated orally as well, through music, i.e. Mevlid ceremonies for the former and storytellers for the latter (Boratav Reference Boratav1946, 127). In fact, there is evidence that epic stories such as Kesik Baş, Güvercin, and Geyik were learnt by heart and recited in reading assemblies (Kuzubaş Reference Kuzubaş2008, 305). In short, Mevlid books and their contents were disseminated both in written and oral form, as were the epics of Ebâ Muslim and the story of Karbala (Arpaguş Reference Arpaguş2015, 84).
Loving Ahl al-Bayt and remembering Karbala
Many of the poems in Mevlid books were written by Sunni Sufis with a reverence for Ali and love of Ahl al-Bayt, such as Niyazi Mısri, Eşrefoğlu Rumi (d. 1469), and Yunus Emre (d. 1320), all of whom are also revered by Alevis. The epics of Güvercin, Deve, and Geyik were read also by Alevis, and the Kesik Baş epic, with Ali as its protagonist, holds esteem among Alevis. The story of the death of Fatma is preserved in the private archives of Alevi dedes as manuscript (Kaplan Reference Kaplan, Weineck and Zimmermann2018, 109). Reverence for Ali and love of Ahl al-Bayt were also essential themes of the books in Arpaguş’s work, as mentioned above. The epic stories were intertwined with these books: for instance, the death of Fatma is part of Muhammediye (Yazıcıoğlu Mehmed Efendi Reference Çelebioğlu1996, 296). In all these texts, Alevi terminology was used to describe Muhammad and Ali, commonly şah-ı cihan and şah-ı enbiya for the former, and şah-ı evliya and şah-ı merdan for the latter. Çelebi’s Mevlid is today mostly considered a Sunni text, though the section on the death of Muhammad includes the Prophet’s farewell to his family and recounts the grief of the Ahl al-Bayt.Footnote 12 Therefore, we can assert, first, that all these texts were interconnected in terms of the central religious motifs of Islam in Turkish.
Second, as religious media, they carried certain aspects of Alevi beliefs into the religious worlds of the Sunni population through words in both textual and oral forms. They also facilitated the circulation of the related genre of books on the Battle of Karbala and the epics of Ebâ Müslim through adverts.
Şakir began writing about Kerbela Vakası in the Tan newspaper on January 1, 1937 and continued until March 27. He preceded the series with the story of Ebâ Müslim from March 27 to July 2, 1937. A cursory glance at the series reveals that, unlike Mevlid books, neither the Kerbela Vakası nor the Ebâ Müslim story was directly based on a lithograph or manuscript. This was probably the reason why they were advertised extensively in newspapers. It appears that Şakir combined the stories of the Battle of Karbala with those of Ebâ Müslim using the method of “popular history,” that is, writing a novel inspired by historical events. Assessing the extent to which Şakir altered historical facts exceeds the scope of this article, but the content merits brief discussion. Notably, the text of Ebâ Müslim reflects the circumstances of the period and the earliest interventions in religiosity. The story depicts Ebâ Müslim’s love of Ahl al-Bayt from childhood and details the Umayyads’ persecution not only of Ahl al-Bayt but also of their subjects. The lavish and morally corrupt life of Umayyads in the palaces of Damascus is emphasized. It also highlights Ebâ Müslim’s struggle as a Turk to end this Arab injustice and the role of the Turkish nation in preserving the Islamic world from collapse. In other words, anti-Arab sentiment and Turkish nationalism are foregrounded, reflecting the ideological milieu of the Republic in the 1930s.
In this rewriting of stories favored by the Turkish population, Şakir was among the authors contributing to the Turkish state’s project of the modernization of folk books by incorporating Turks into the narrative and removing supernatural elements (Öztürk Reference Öztürk2006). Indeed, in a long footnote, Şakir noted that Ebâ Müslim’s life had been transformed into a mythological tale, laden with superstitions that attributed divine powers to him, elevated him to sainthood, and even falsified his nationality (Tan, June 5, 1937). Şakir, on the one hand, Turkified the story in a historicist manner.Footnote 13 On the other hand, by leveraging Ebâ Müslim’s popularity among the populace and appealing to their religious sensibilities, he actively reshaped the memory of Ebâ Müslim, who was not necessarily portrayed as a Turk in earlier versions. In other words, as religious media, Şakir’s books exemplify the early transformation of religiosity from the Empire to the Republic through secular modernization, encompassing both disenchantment (the elimination of supernatural aspects) and nationalization (Turkification).
Nevertheless, his version retained Alevi tendencies, in contrast to renditions that would Sunnify these stories, i.e. present them without negative expressions about the Umayyads (e.g. Doğrul Reference Doğrul1948). It is noteworthy that Şakir himself was an Alevi, as is his choice of the left-wing newspaper Tan to publish these stories, which presumably afforded him the freedom to write without Sunni biases. This may explain why Naci Kasım decided to issue the series as a book. Hüseyin’s martyrdom remains central to the Kerbela Vakası, which is marked by strong negative portrayals of the Umayyads. Muaviye and his son Yezid, and their injustices toward the Ahl al-Bayt, are prominently featured in the narrative. Şakir explicitly recounts the suffering of Hüseyin, his family, and his companions in the desert of Karbala, where they were deprived of water for ten days, as well as in Damascus, where the survivors were brought as captives.
His narrative was well received by Turkish society, as evidenced by the success of the book. While the Sunnified versions were limited to the readership of certain newspapers and magazines at the time, Şakir’s editions were reprinted at least fifteen times under slightly different titles until 1991 by İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi.Footnote 14 The series and books also contained visual material. Both narratives are imbued with emotive language, and although they lack the supernatural elements characteristic of earlier versions, they still render Hüseyin’s suffering and Ebâ Müslim’s revenge tangible and perceptible. It appears that, through these books, the Alevi versions of the Karbala and Ebâ Müslim stories persisted. In other words, although Şakir’s books were Turkified and historicized, they continued to function as religious media for the entirety of Turkish society, both Sunni and Alevi. It is therefore unsurprising that his works and İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi came under the scrutiny of the Turkish state and were sharply criticized by Islamist circles from 1944 onwards. We can thus infer that the Battle of Karbala, a central theme in Alevi Islam, became a key site in the religious modernization of Turkey. The proximity of the Alevi version of the Battle of Karbala to its counterpart in Sunni folk Islam made this event a decisive factor in delineating Sunni and Alevi religiosity.
Superstition, Shia propaganda and global entanglements
The final years of World War II and its immediate aftermath marked the beginning of a transformation of secular politics in Turkey. The government changed its policy on folk books, selecting some for classification as religious texts and sending them to Diyanet for inspection. This selection process particularly targeted religious media reflecting overlapping Alevi and Sunni beliefs. Criticism began with Ali’s epics in 1944 and President İsmet İnönü had them confiscated in 1945 following Diyanet’s opinion.Footnote 15 Mevlid books were also targeted in 1944, and in particular those published by İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi were criticized by Diyanet as being either superstitious for their stories or Shia propaganda for adverts on Karbala books; these criticisms once again led to their confiscation by order of İnönü.Footnote 16 Karbala books faced the harshest condemnation in Diyanet’s inspection of books. Notably, there is no evidence that Iran conducted such propaganda against Turkey in the mid-1940s, apart from Shia activities in Iraq (Yaslıçimen Reference Yaslıçimen2016) or Iranian actors in İstanbul during the late Ottoman period (İnal Reference İnal2016).Footnote 17
Diyanet’s accusation in this context raises important questions. It goes without saying that the Diyanet authorities were familiar with the Ottoman book culture and the religious books favored by the population. Was the promotion of Karbala books as “How did Alevism begin?” decisive? In other words, can we presume that Diyanet’s concern was not that Sunnis were reading Karbala books, but that they were reading them as Alevism, as indicated in the advertisements (1939, 69; 1943, 64)?Footnote 18 Aside from this emphasis in the adverts, the only direct relation to Alevism in Mevlid books was Mevlid-i Ali, on Ali’s birth, which was favored and written by Alevis, published only once in the 1943 version, and also considered Shia propaganda by Diyanet.Footnote 19 To what extent does Shia propaganda overlap with the term central to late Ottoman historiographical discourses on superstition, namely “Batini propaganda,” originating from Iran, Horasan, or Syria, and used in relation to Alevism and communism (Dinç Reference Dinç and Azak2025c, 240–241)? Naci Kasım’s Iranian roots and Ziya Şakir’s Alevi identity must have played a role. Yet, as discussed above, neither the Mevlid books nor Şakir’s stories were “invented” but rather grounded in the religious culture of Turkish speakers. Why, then, were Diyanet and the Turkish state disturbed by this Islam? Addressing these difficult questions is beyond the scope of this article, but it is worth noting, as İsmail Kara observes, that the Islamist elite has been incompetent to engage with the Ottoman religious heritage (Kara Reference Kara2017, 481).
By the end of the 1940s, criticism of Ziya Şakir and his books moved from internal state correspondence to the public sphere through Islamist journals, which accused him of “sowing discord” among the population, an accusation often directed at Alevis.Footnote 20 During the 1950s, Şakir and İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi also attracted international attention, reflecting the growing perception of Turkey’s “religious revival” as a bulwark against communism. For instance, Howard A. Reed noted that many publishers tried to “appeal to the gross or narrow instincts of their readers” by producing “a number of completely unauthorized and scurrilous books dressed up and presented as alleged ‘holy books’ and sold by travelling salesmen for a big commission or whatever the traffic will bear in rural areas” (Reed Reference Reed1954, 275). He concurred with the Turkish government’s policy that “responsibility of censorship was assigned to representatives of the Presidency of Religious Affairs” (Reed Reference Reed1954, 276).
Similarly, Lewis observed a considerable increase in religious books and the religious press, highlighting journals such as Türk İslâm Ansiklopedisi and Sebilürreşad, which “enjoyed” Diyanet support (Lewis Reference Lewis1952, 42). He noted that their contributors were “responsible for many of the religious books which are appearing” (Lewis Reference Lewis1952, 44). As these examples show, the term “religious” came to denote media either approved by Diyanet or produced by Islamist actors associated with it. Thus, religious media was consolidated as Sunni Islamic in the understanding of Diyanet and related actors, who were highly critical of Islam in Turkish and its media, through domestic efforts while simultaneously being shaped by global entanglements.
Lewis and Reed’s work is indicative of the consolidation of another dimension of the religious, namely Turkish, society. They argued that, despite the strict secularism of the Turkish state until the mid-1940s, Turkish society had not abandoned Islam and remained deeply religious. To support this claim, they pointed to normative markers of Sunni-Islamic practice, such as mosque attendance, fasting, pilgrimage, namaz, and listening to the Quran on state radio (Lewis Reference Lewis1952, 42; Reed Reference Reed1954, 271). In one of the most detailed analyses of religious revival in 1950s’ Turkey, Reed addressed these practices under the subheading “The Five Pillars of Islam” (Reed Reference Reed and Frye1957, 127–131). He observed that, “despite the secularization of modern Turkey, Shahâda stands unshaken,” and that the other pillars “were more popular than they have been since 1928.” According to Reed, although “Turks are ignorant of Arabic and do not learn the meaning of the prayer,” their lives “from birth to death” remained “punctuated and illuminated by Islam,” as evidenced by Mevlid ceremonies (Reed Reference Reed and Frye1957, 121–126). His silence on Mevlid books mirrors the broader approach to Islam taken by both Islamist and secular elites in Turkey.
Conclusion: contours and future trajectories of Islam in Turkish
This article has examined the religiosity of Turkish society through books and their management in the Republic. A historical rather than a theological perspective proved particularly fruitful for understanding the essential features of Sunni folk Islam. Beyond the common practice of saint veneration, it was characterized by particular reverence for Ali, alongside acceptance of the first three caliphs; adherence to Sharia (maybe not always strictly); love of Ahl al-Bayt; hatred and cursing of Muaviye and Yezid (tevella and teberra) (e.g. Dinç Reference Dinç2025a). Unlike Alevis, the Sunni population did not venerate the Twelve Imams recognized by Twelver Shiis. Mevlid and Ziya Şakir’s books clearly exhibit these characteristics. In this respect, the evidence presented here revises the literature on Ottoman Sunnism and, by extension, Islam in Anatolia after the Safavid conflict in two ways. First, Ottoman Sunnism was deeply imbued also with the concept of Nur Muhammad. Second, this Sunni folk religiosity persisted beyond the sixteenth century, contrary to Ocak’s claim that it merely transformed into Kizilbash-Alevism (Ocak Reference Ocak2013, 52).
The contributions and shortcomings of Ocak’s work on Alevis have been thoroughly discussed by Dressler (Reference Dressler2013, 260–268). Regarding Sunni folk Islam, Ocak (Reference Ocak2021, 333–384) rightly emphasizes the influential role of Sufism in shaping this Islam and its interconnection with ulema (madrasah) Islam, as well as the importance of Sunni religious books. However, he still frames it as popular Islam, approaches it as folk religion and presents its mythological cosmology as a “problem.” Moreover, he relies on Orientalist travel literature as primary sources and prioritizes “remnants” in folk religiosity. Kara rightly observes that, although several traditions in Islam were influenced by earlier and neighboring cultures and religions, it is not these but the “remnants” in folk Islam that are often treated as problems and studied on their own (Kara Reference Kara2023, 866). I would add that advancing this research requires engaging with the religious books as primary sources from an emic perspective on their use. This should include books discussed here and others which I could not explore in depth, such as Mızraklı İlmihal, or stories like that of Veysel Karani or folk narratives such as Leyla ile Mecnun, including a gendered perspective. These texts are interconnected both in terms of religious motifs and in their material forms as manuscripts and printed books and such research would contribute to studies of Ottoman book culture and its continuity in the Republic. Further research on İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi can illuminate the overlaps between Alevi and Sunni religiosity – far more extensive than either tradition tends to acknowledge today (Kara Reference Kara2023, 878).Footnote 21
Such research would allow us to further the concept of Islam in Turkish through interdisciplinary collaboration with scholars of history, literature, folklore, and theology. Islam in Turkish is closely related to Kara’s notion of “living Islam,” highlighting forms of religiosity delegitimized by Islamist modernizers (Kara Reference Kara and Bora2004, 43–44). My aim is to extend this notion through an explicit focus on language. For instance, the veneration of saints – not necessarily Muslim – is shared by religious minorities as well as Kurds, transcending linguistic and confessional boundaries and the extent to which these practices relate to (or informed by) saints’ hagiographies in Turkish remains to be explored. From this perspective, Mevlid as a practice is likewise shared (Dinç Reference Dinç2021, 181–186), but it is an essential part of Islam in Turkish, rooted in Çelebi’s fifteenth-century text. Islam in Turkish complements the Sharia, Quran, Hadith, and Arabic-based “normative” Islam of Sunni Muslim society, yet it is primarily characterized by Sufism.
Turkish-speaking Sufis such as Yazıcıoğlu Mehmed Efendi and Niyazi Mısri, most with madrasah training, resembled early modern authors of Rum in their mastery of Arabic through the Quran and Persian through Mevlana (Kuru Reference Kuru, Faroqhi and Fleet2012, 556–562). Yunus Emre, Fuzuli, and Yemini – often categorized respectively as a folk, divan, and Qalandar/Bektashi poet – were all part of Islam in Turkish in different ways. They all employed overlapping terminologies regarding Nur Muhammad, his “holy helper” Ali, Fatma’s grief, or Hüseyin’s suffering in Karbala. Kurds were not exempt from this Islam. For instance, the leading Kurdish Sunni Sufi Said Nursî (d. 1960) wrote his masterpiece Nûr Risâleleri in Turkish, explicitly invoking the concept of Nur Muhammad. One treatise, entitled Zülfikar, where he claims that his “master in the truths of faith is Imam Ali,”Footnote 22 demonstrates his engagement with Alevism. Indeed, Alevism stands out as the prominent tradition of Islam in Turkish with a substantial literary corpus. Kurdish Alevis’ collective memory is indeed shaped by authoritative Alevi texts in Turkish, such as Yemini’s (Reference Tepeli2002) Faziletname or the Buyruk of Şeyh Şafi (Gezik Reference Gezik2016, 79).
Therefore, Islam in Turkish is proposed as a heuristic device that captures a historically specific religiosity, formed and transmitted across generations through Turkish in Anatolia and the Balkans. It is not isolated from the religiosity of other vernacular language speakers or non-Muslims, but in dialogue with them through shared rituals and Sufi and Alevi textual traditions. It transcends modern binaries such as elite versus folk people, culture and religion, and it challenges distinctions between Islam and Sufism, urban and rural, or between Islamic texts and literary works. This religiosity encompasses both prose and poetry and has always retained an oral dimension. Visuality and music are also integral to it, in varying ways. In this regard, the most decisive rupture in the religiosity of Muslim society in Turkey affected more Sunni Muslims and occurred between 1944 and the late 1980s as evidenced by the cessation of publications by İstanbul Maarif Kitaphanesi. The impact of this transformation on Alevis warrants a separate study, and I do not imply that Sunni-Muslim religiosity remained unchanged before 1944, nor that these communities were homogeneous or static. However, this religiosity, sustained for centuries through oral, visual, and scriptural forms despite repeated Ottoman interventions, was decisively disrupted in the nation-state.
Writing its history without a normative Sunni framework is especially urgent today, given Turkey’s near absence in recent critical studies of Islam. Shahab Ahmed (Reference Ahmed2016) contributed to the critical study of Islam through his work on Persian Sufis and their poetry, and Thomas Bauer (Reference Bauer2011) through alternative readings of the Quran and Hadith and Arabic poetry. Griffel notes, however, that both works share an Achilles’ heel: their portrayal of modern Muslims as “reductionist and coarse” (Griffel Reference Griffel2017, 19). As I have shown, it is possible to bring together modern and early modern Islam in Turkish, also to “provincialize Europe” (Chakrabarty Reference Chakrabarty2008), by recognizing its intrinsic value. This value has long been obscured by the Western model of modernization and secularization that legitimized “orthodox” Islam as the “correct” one, relegating overlapping components of religiosity to the realm of Alevism and pushing Alevism to the margins. Yet, beyond these institutional and ideological transformations, the lived experiences of Muslims in Anatolia reveal a far richer religious landscape. Muslims in Anatolia cultivated a distinctive Islam in Turkish, where birth and death, human and animal, nature and heaven, divine wonder and charm coexisted in perfect harmony. Illuminating its history across generations is an amazing task for the future.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Professor Christoph K. Neumann and Professor Birgit Meyer for reading earlier versions of this article and providing insightful feedback. I also thank Professor M. Macit Karagözoğlu for our discussions, as well as the anonymous reviewers and the journal editor for their insightful comments. Research for this article was supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye, TÜBİTAK, under the 2219 Program (grant number 1059B192100495).
Competing interests
There are no competing interests.
Open access
