Alevism As Islam

British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
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Alevism as Islam: rethinking Shahab Ahmed’s

conceptualization of Islam through Alevi poetry
Zeynep Oktay-Uslu
To cite this article: Zeynep Oktay-Uslu (2020): Alevism as Islam: rethinking Shahab Ahmed’s
conceptualization of Islam through Alevi poetry, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, DOI:
10.1080/13530194.2020.1792831
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2020.1792831
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BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2020.1792831
ARTICLE
Alevism as Islam: rethinking Shahab Ahmed’s

conceptualization of Islam through Alevi poetry
Zeynep Oktay-Uslu
Department of Turkish Language and Literature, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey
ABSTRACT
Shahab Ahmed’s What is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic, pub
lished in 2016, has significantly impacted discussions on the definition
of Islam. This article focuses on Ahmed’s reconceptualization of Islam as
‘hermeneutical engagement with Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text of
Revelation to Muhammad’. As an Islamic tradition which greatly contra
_
dicts various normative Islamic traditions, Alevism is a valuable locus for
testing Ahmed’s reconceptualization of Islam. In the first part of this
article, I aim to show how Alevis formulated their relation to Islam in
their poetry and other classical texts, in order to address whether we
can situate Alevism within the sphere of Islam as defined by Shahab
Ahmed. In the second part, I compare Ahmed’s conceptualization of
Islam to those of Alevis. For both parts, I use as my source the historical
and literary documents of Alevism, such as buyruḳs, mathnawīs, dīvāns,
and poems in poetry collections. I argue that including cases like
Alevism to Islam’s landscape of contradictions (limited to Sunni Islam
in Ahmed’s work) not only deconstructs our (in this case, Ahmed’s)
existing conceptualizations of Islam, but also serves to reconceptualize
Islam.
Introduction
As the field of Islamic Studies is slowly letting go of its disinclination towards theorization,
the definition of Islam is becoming a major source of debate among Western scholars.1
This debate is fuelled, among other things, by the debate over definitions of the concept
of religion.2 How do we define religion without a modern and modernist bias? Are culture
CONTACT Zeynep Oktay-Uslu zeynep.oktay@boun.edu.tr Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Bölümü
Natuk Birkan Binası Güney Kampüs 34342 Istanbul, Turkey
1
For forerunners of this debate, see Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 45–95; Abdul Hamid el-Zein, ‘Beyond Ideology and Theology: The Search for the
Anthropology of Islam’, Annual Review of Anthropology 6 (1977): 227–52; W. Montgomery Watt, What is Islam? (London:
Longman, 1968); Louis Gardet, ‘Religion and Culture’, in The Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 2B: Islamic Society and Civilization,
ed. P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton and Bernard Lewis (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970), 569–603; Jacques
Waardenburg, ‘Islam studied as a symbol and signification system’, Humaniora Islamica 2 (1974): 267–85. A major reconceptua
lization of Islam which followed these earlier debates is Talal Asad’s The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam. See Talal Asad, The Idea
of an Anthropology of Islam (Washington, D.C.: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1986).
2
A few discussions which have now become classical are: Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (New York:
Mentor Books, 1964); Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies (New York: New York University
Press, 2000). For a comparison between the Western concept of ‘religion’ and the Islamic concept of ‘dīn’, see Ahmet
T. Karamustafa, ‘Islamic Dīn as an Alternative to Western Models of “Religion”’, in Religion, Theory, Critique: Classical and
Contemporary Approaches and Methodologies, ed. Richard King (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 163–71.
© 2020 British Society for Middle Eastern Studies
2 Z. OKTAY-USLU
and religion different phenomena? What role does the concept of civilization play in this?
How do we (or can we) differentiate between the Islamic civilization and Islam, the
religion? How do we deconstruct the modern discourses regarding these concepts?
How meaningful are these concepts for the pre-modern world?
The discussions on the definition of Alevism, currently the second largest religious
denomination in Turkey, have had a rather different trajectory: Among popular Alevi
intellectuals in Turkey, the definition of Alevism has become a heated political issue. This
can be evidenced from the fact that the majority of the popular works written by Alevi
intellectuals take defining Alevism as their main problematic. The general topics of debate
are: Is Alevism a part of Islam? Is it outside of Islam? Is it a denomination? Is it a path? Is it
some sort of a Sufi sect? Is it an aspect of Turkish/Kurdish culture? Is it innovation taken to
an extreme degree (a Sunni discourse)? The answers to these questions have far reaching
consequences for government policies towards Alevis and the Alevis’ self-identifications.3
Early Republican scholar M. Fuad Köprülü’s definition of Alevism as a religious syncret
ism/heterodoxy which is an authentic part of Turkish culture remains the main paradigm
of the academic discourse in Turkey,4 reinforced by the works of important figures such as
Irène Mélikoff and Ahmet Yaşar Ocak. While its recent critiques have led to a break with
this paradigm in the international academia,5 this has not yet led to a redefinition process.
As such, we cannot speak of the existence of a meaningful scholarly debate regarding the
definition of Alevism and its relationship to Islam.6
Scholarly debates on the definitions of Islam can serve as a model for transferring the
popular debate on defining Alevism to the academic realm, while also helping to analyse
the popular debates themselves. This is of course a vast project, for which the article at
hand should be considered a humble beginning. My concentration will be on one
3
For analyses of popular discourses of Alevi identity, in particular those of the Alevi ‘araştırmacı-yazar’ (independent
researcher-writers), see Mehmet Ertan, Aleviliğin Politikleşme Süreci: Kimlik Siyasetinin Kısıtlılıkları ve İmkânları (Istanbul:
İletişim Yayınları, 2017), 109–22, 181–84; Karin Vorhoff, ‘The Past in the Future: Discourses on the Alevis in
Contemporary Turkey’, in Turkey’s Alevi Enigma: A Comprehensive Overview, ed. Paul J. White and Joost Jongerden
(Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2003), 93–109; Élise Massicard, L’Autre Turquie: Le mouvement aléviste et ses territoires (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 2005), 91–105, 197–205; Karin Vorhoff, Zwischen Glaube, Nation und neuer
Gemeinschaft: alevitische Indentität in der Türkei der Gegenwart (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1995), 77–181, cited in:
Massicard, L’Autre Turquie, 6.
4
The popularization of this discourse by Alevi authors has had far-reaching consequences for Alevi identity, playing a part
in what Vorhoff refers to as ‘an ethnicity process with strong revivalist traits’. See Vorhoff, ‘The Past in the Future’, 106.
5
See Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, ‘The Vefā’iyye, the Bektashiyye and Genealogies of “Heterodox” Islam in Anatolia: Rethinking
the Köprülü Paradigm’, Turcica 44 (2012): 279–82; Devin DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde:
Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press,
1994), 17–39; Devin Deweese, foreword to Early mystics in Turkish Literature, by Mehmed Fuad Köprülü, ed. and trans.
Gary Leiser and Robert Dankoff (London-New York: Routledge, 2006); Markus Dressler, ‘How to Conceptualize Inner-
Islamic Plurality/Difference: “Heterodoxy” and “Syncretism” in the Writings of Mehmet F. Köprülü (1890–1966)’, British
Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 37/3 (2010): 241–60; Markus Dressler, Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam
(Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 19–23; 153–287.
6
Indeed, it seems that scholars are particularly avoidant of a debate on definitions, as evidenced by Rıza Yıldırım’s recently
published Geleneksel Alevilik, which seeks to offer a cumulative portrait of traditional Alevi belief and practice through
oral sources. In this ambitious work, Alevism’s relation to Islam is glossed over with the author’s passing references to
Alevism’s ‘Islamic roots’. See Rıza Yıldırım, Geleneksel Alevilik: İnanç, İbadet, Kurumlar, Toplumsal Yapı, Kolektif Bellek
(Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2018), 181–96. This is reinforced by Yıldırım’s lack of references to the Islamic origins of
various beliefs and practices, resulting in their portrayal as phenomena unique to Alevism. On the other side of the
spectrum, some scholars have offered problematic judgements, such as that of Kehl-Bodrogi who has claimed that
Alevis should not be seen as Muslims because they do not adhere to the five pillars and do not accept the Quran as the
absolute word of God; see Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi, Die Kızılbaş/Aleviten: Untersuchungen über eine esoterische
Glaubensgemeinschaft in Anatolien (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1988), 120–122. Such statements show the importance
of definitions of Islam for defining Alevism.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 3
theoretical work which has significantly impacted discussions on the definitions of Islam:
Shahab Ahmed’s What is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic. In this work, Ahmed
attempts to extend the definition of ‘Islamic’, deconstruct previous conceptualizations of
Islam, and offer his own conceptualization. Here I will focus on Ahmed’s reconceptualiza
tion of Islam as ‘hermeneutical engagement with Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text of
Revelation to Muhammad’.7 According to this definition; the source of revelation, the
_
text of revelation (the Quran), and all subsequent engagements with the source and text
of revelation should be considered as part of Islam. In fact, this tri-partite structure of
revelation is the reason for the great amount of contradiction inherent to Islam. Ahmed’s
aim is thus to formulate a definition of Islam according to which the internal contra
dictions of Islam can be made to cohere.
As an Islamic tradition which greatly contradicts various Islamic traditions with norma
tive claims, Alevism is a valuable locus for testing Ahmed’s reconceptualization of Islam to
see if it can make Alevism cohere with prescriptive/proscriptive Islamic discourses, such as
that of Islamic law (in addition to the explorative discourses of the discursive realm
Ahmed refers to as the ‘Sufi-Philosophical Amalgam,’ see below).8 For this coherence to
be achieved, Ahmed’s reconceptualization would need to be meaningful from the per
spective of Alevism.
While present-day Alevi discourses on the relationship of Alevism to Islam have been
analysed by modern scholars, there have been no studies looking at how the Alevis
(Ḳızılbaş) and related communities have historically defined themselves vis-à-vis Islam.
The current plurality of Alevi discourses regarding Alevism’s relationship to Islam is not
reflected in the Alevi textual tradition prior to modern times. These sources dating from
the early sixteenth century onwards9 show that Alevis had their own conceptualization of
Islam, according to which they were not only Muslims, but in fact the original Muslims
who stayed on the true path while the rest of the Islamic community strayed.
In the first part of this article, I will analyse the Alevi discourse on the Alevis’ Islamic
identity and discuss how we can situate Alevism vis-à-vis other Islamic discourses, most
notably those of Sufism. The second part of the article will contain a comparison between
Ahmed’s conceptualization of Islam and the conceptualizations of pre-modern Bektashi
and Alevi poets (I will discuss the issue of Bektashi vs Alevi poetry further on in the
article).10 As such, I am not putting my focus on current popular debates. Poetry is of
course one of the many contexts in which Alevis have historically defined themselves.
However, as my discussion will hopefully show, it is foundational for all other contexts. In
fact, the definition of Alevism in history cannot be separated from the definition of poetry
by Alevis.
It is clear that Alevism has undergone, and is continuing to undergo, important
changes due to the impact of modernization on the lives of Alevis.11 On the other
7
Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam?: The Importance for Being Islamic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 363. For
a discussion of various previous definitions of Islam and their detailed criticism; see Ahmed, 113–297.
8
For prescriptive vs. explorative discourses, see Ahmed, 272–384.
9
There are also several important earlier sources which later became part of the zılbaş tradition.
10
I use the word Bektashi to refer to the Bektashis of the Babagān branch, that is, those belonging to the Sufi path of the
Bektaşiyye. In this article I do not deal with the other group also named Bektashi, that of the Çelebis, claimed
descendants of Hacı Bektaş.
11
As Shahab Ahmed and others treat extensively, the same is also true for Islam, or indeed, for any ‘religion’ for which
modernity was largely an import.
4 Z. OKTAY-USLU
hand, due to the continuing central role of poetry in Alevi ritual, or rather not just of
poetry, but of much of the same canonized poetry, it is possible for us to extend the given
conceptualizations up to the present day. The limits of that extension (and thus the
current changes in the role and content of poetry) are a most exciting topic of research,
which is beyond our scope here.12
Although I have selected poetry as my locus, I will make an effort in several instances to
extend beyond it, to look at some aspects which stand outside it but are deeply linked to
it. Knowing that Alevism itself is a modern term, and that the Ḳızılbaş were but one of
many groups13 which are under the larger umbrella of Alevism today (the Bektashis being
one of them, but also abdāls, ḳalenders, haydarīs, hurūfîs14), I will not extend my discus
_ _
sions to all of these groups. However, I will include references to poetry by poets with
such affiliations in accordance with their importance for the Alevi-Bektashi literary
corpus.15
The article at hand is a critique of the fundamental aspects of Ahmed’s conceptualization.
Indeed, the effort to apply Ahmed’s conceptualization to Alevism proves most fruitful not for
understanding Alevism, but for understanding the loopholes and underlying assumptions in
Ahmed’s argumentation. A comparison with Alevi religious tenets reveals that Shahab
Ahmed’s conceptualization based on the concepts of Text, Pre-Text, and Con-Text posits
the primacy of the Quran (Text) and Muhammad (as the object of Revelation). However,
despite the significant place of Sufi discourses in Alevi discourse, neither the Quran nor
Prophet Muhammad are central in Alevi belief and practice. Many of the Alevi perspectives
on friendship with God (walāyah) underline the equality of Muhammad, Imams, and Alevi
saints. Revelation is not unique to Muhammad, but rather the quality of all speech belonging
to Perfect Men. As a result, we cannot speak of a meaningful difference between Text (the
Quran) and Con-Text (Ahmed’s category for the texts written by friends of God).
Reading Shahab Ahmed’s conceptualization of Islam together with Alevism shows that
extrapolating from Sunni sources (and probably one’s own beliefs) definitions of Islam
which are claimed to stand for all of Islam is a methodological falsehood.16 I argue that
including cases like Alevism to Islam’s landscape of contradictions (limited to Sunni Islam
12
In his article named ‘Turkish Alevi Poetry in the Twentieth Century’, Markus Dressler analyses modern Alevi poetry, but
does not undertake a comparison with its pre-modern counterpart. See Markus Dressler, ‘Turkish Alevi Poetry in the
Twentieth Century: The Fusion of Political and Religious Identities’, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 23 (2003): 109–54.
Dressler focuses on poets belonging to the ʿāşıḳ (minstrel) institution, which has been closely identified with Alevi poetry
in modern times. The relationship between the ʿāşıḳ institution and pre-modern Alevi poetry has not been researched, but
the lack of use of the title of ʿāşıḳ by pre-modern Alevi poets indicates that the relationship must have been different prior
to modernity, where numerous renowned ʿāşıḳs were not Alevi. For an important Alevi movement dating from the
nineteenth century onwards which has had significant influence on Anatolian ʿāşıḳs, see Ulaş Özdemir, ‘Hakikatçi Âşıklık:
Historical and Musical Traces of a Religious Movement’, in Diversity and Contact among Singer-Poet Traditions in Eastern
Anatolia, ed. Ulaş Özdemir, Wendelmoet Hamelink, and Martin Greve (Baden-Baden: Ergon Verlag, 2018), 149–82.
13
The term zılbaş’ itself was an umbrella term, referring to various groups such as taḫtacıs, çepnis, ḳoçgirilis, bedreddīnīs,
etc.
14
In addition to related groups, such as the ahl-i haqqs, alawīs, etc.
15 _
On the issue of the canonization of this heterogeneous corpus as well as the problematic of written vs. oral sources, see
Benjamin Weineck and Johannes Zimmermann, ‘Introduction: Sourcing Alevism between Standard, “Canon”, and
Plurality’, in Alevism between Standardization and Plurality: Negotiating Texts, Sources and Cultural Heritage, ed.
Benjamin Weineck and Johannes Zimmermann (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018), 35–44. On the issue of an Alevi canon also
see Rıza Yıldırım’s contribution within the same volume.
16
In his review of What is Islam? Khalil Andani also underlines the problematic nature of Ahmed’s lack of analyses
regarding Shi i traditions of Islam (both Twelver Shi ism and Isma ilism). However, in contrast with the main
argument of my paper, he sees these traditions to be entirely compatible with Shahab Ahmed’s reconceptualization of
Islam. See Khalil Andani, ‘What is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 2016:
1–4.
in Ahmed’s work) not only deconstructs our (in this case, Ahmed’s) existing conceptua
lizations of Islam, but also serves to reconceptualize Islam.
How is Alevism Islamic?

As demonstrated by the subtitle of Shahab Ahmed’s What is Islam?: The importance of being
Islamic, Ahmed seeks to define both Islam and Islamic, although these definitions do not
always overlap. For instances of being Islamic and not Islam, Ahmed refers to examples such as
the philosophy of Maimonides and Sikh wrestlers in India who shout out the name of ʿAli
b. Abi Talib. This line of thought regarding how Islam becomes a source for thought and
action for non-Muslims is more obvious, but Ahmed actually puts greater emphasis on the
reverse. He says: ‘Any unit of meaning produced by a non-Muslim that is invested by Muslims
with meaning-making capacity and that is inducted by them into the process of hermeneu
tical engagement with Revelation becomes a part of the Con-Text: that is to say, it becomes
a unit of meaning in terms of Islam’.17 I will undertake a lengthy discussion of what Ahmed
means by ‘Con-Text’ further on, but suffice to say that what he means here by becoming ‘a
part of the Con-text’ is becoming a part of Islam. He underlines the possibility and indeed
importance of saying ‘Plato is Islamic’ and ‘Aristotle is Islamic’ and says that referring to ‘Islamic
Plato’ and ‘Islamic Aristotle’ also indicates that there are aspects of these philosophers’
thoughts which were not taken up by Muslims.18
As a result, we can say that Ahmed’s definition of Islamic is significantly larger than his
definition of Islam. With this perspective in mind, the questions ‘Is Alevism Islamic?’ and ‘Is
Alevism part of Islam?’ end up being quite different. However, we do not discern this difference
in the first part of Ahmed’s work, where he poses ‘six questions about Islam’ (the title of the first
chapter). He discusses, consecutively, Islamic philosophy (as exemplified by Avicenna), Sufism,
the philosophies of Suhrawardī and Ibn ʿArabī, the poetry of Hāfiz, Islamic Art, and the
_ _
consumption of wine. He ends each of these sections with the question ‘How is this Islamic?’
(or a version of the phrase). In this context, ‘How is this Islamic?’ and ‘How is this part of Islam?’
do not appear to be different questions. Indeed, his main purpose throughout the chapter is to
demonstrate that Islam embodies a great amount of contradiction and that we are in need of
a conceptualization of Islam to meaningfully reflect this fact.
For Ahmed, Muslim actors are making Islam while they are being made by Islam.
Furthermore, each of the above actors as well as those who consume their works and
perpetuate their models of thought are not only making Islam, they are also making normative
claims about Islam. Ahmed does not view the resulting contradictions through the lens of an
orthodoxy/heterodoxy or centre/periphery model (and indeed deeply criticizes this). He aims
‘to re-orient the historical consciousness of the reader to awareness of the fact that these
contradictory claims by Muslims about the normative constitution of Islam were claims made,
not on the social and political and intellectual margins of the Muslims’ discourses about Islam,
but rather at the very social and political and intellectual centre of Muslims’ discourses about
Islam’.19 This is why he chooses to discuss some of the most widely read authors and focus on
a Sunni context. Ahmed unites these normative claims under the title of ‘Sufi-Philosophical
17
Ahmed, 435.
18
Ibid., 436.
19
Ibid., 72–73.
6 Z. OKTAY-USLU
Amalgam’, which he defines as: ‘the Sufi and philosophical claim to a Real-Truth (haqīqah) that
_
lay above and beyond the truth of the Revealed law (sharīʿah)’.20
Ahmed’s presentation of the ‘Sufi-Philosophical Amalgam’ as a normative sphere
equally if not more powerful than that of the Law, as well as his stress on the ‘Balkans-
to-Bengal complex’ as an equally if not more important contributor to Islam than the Arab
world21 are deeply meaningful for reshaping our biased academic stance towards
Alevism. Much like the rather-Salafi-looking orientation of Western academia regarding
the study of Islam,22 the study of Alevism is tied to the notion of a contrast with what is
considered to be proper Islam. Markus Dressler’s work, Writing Religion: The Making of
Turkish Alevi Islam23 powerfully presents the genealogy of Turkish academic discourse on
Alevism, forever haunted by the figure of M. Fuad Köprülü and his paradigm of insufficient
Islamization leading to syncretic Alevi belief and practice.
For Köprülü and his followers, Alevism as ‘heterodoxy’ is a mixture of Islamic ‘religion’ with
pre-Islamic Turkish ‘culture,’ the categories of religion and culture thus being firmly distin
guished from one another. As explained by Dressler, ‘for Köprülü the analytical problem is
about how to dissect secondary cultural, and foreign (non-Islamic), religious elements from
the essentially Islamic’.24 Yet as current debates on the definitions of religion have shown (and
as Shahab Ahmed also underlines), this very binary between culture and religion would not
have made sense for peoples living prior to modernity, and still do not make sense for many.
As such, our Alevi and Bektashi authors and poets would not differentiate between the Islamic
and non-Islamic in the content of their belief and practice. Because they viewed themselves as
Muslims (and this is the major difference from Maimonides or Sikh wrestlers), the questions ‘Is
Alevism Islamic?’ and ‘Is Alevism part of Islam?’ would not mean different things to them.
Indeed, to them the question would not only have been absurd, but also offensive. Because
they viewed themselves not only as Muslims, but as the true Muslims.25
20
Ibid., 31.
21
Ahmed’s use of the term ‘Balkans-to-Bengal complex’ is considered by some scholars as a replacement of Marshall
Hodgson’s ‘Persianate’, which shifts the linguistic focus of the same phenomenon to a religious focus. In the
introduction to his edited volume named The Persianate World, Nile Green agrees with Ahmed’s emphasis on multi
lingualism but criticizes this shift for leading to Islamic particularism and taking the focus away from cultural contact
and exchange. See Nile Green, introduction to The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca, ed. Nile
Green (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019), 6.
22
See Ibid., 81–82, 171–73 (where Ahmed reads Hodgson’s distinction between ‘Islamic’ and ‘Islamicate’ as unwillingly
perpetuating a Salafi-like understanding), 219.
23
See Dressler, Writing Religion.
24
Ibid., 203.
25
The same can be said for many Alevis living today, although for many others, Alevism should be considered as a religion
of its own right, separate from Islam. One formulation of the former perspective among Alevi elites is the idea of
Alevism as a subgroup located under the Bātiniyya (esotericists) understood to contain all Islamic groups which give
_
precedence to inward meaning. See for instance Reha Çamuroğlu, Tarih, Heterodoksi ve Babailer (Istanbul: Der Yayınları,
1990). As a result of this formulation, many of these Alevis believe that the formation of Alevism is contemporaneous
with the advent of Islam. On the other hand, the latter perspective of locating Alevism outside of Islam usually comes
with the belief that Alevism existed prior to the advent of Islam. This discourse goes hand in hand with a discourse of
syncretism, wherein the negative values attached to it by Köprülü and others are turned on their heads to become
positive values. According to this discourse, likely inspired by the writings of French anthropologist Irène Mélikoff and
perpetuated by numerous popular works by Alevi intellectuals, Alevism was the original religion of Anatolia or Central
Asia or Mesopotamia (depending on the author’s nationalist stance) and can be said to go back millenia (and can be
located within various religions). Locating Alevism outside of Islam is often related to equating Islam with Sunni Islam
and the strong need to dissociate from the latter due to its association with the historical persecution of the Alevis, and
lately, with Islamic fundamentalism. To these views should be added the ‘non-religious’ stance of Alevis who equate
Alevism with ethnic and cultural identity. This stance which became popular with the spread of leftist movements in the
60 s and 70 s has been in decline since the Alevi revival of the late 80 s and 90 s. I must also stress that the positioning of
Alevism within/outside of Islam is a heated debate with serious political ramifications.
These true Muslims are none other than those Muslims who said yes to ‘Am I not your
Lord?’ in the Preeternal Pact referenced in the Quran (7:172). As such, they are and have
always been one with God. As frequently repeated in Alevi-Bektashi poetry, they are the
gürūh-ı nācī (the saved community). Their ‘true Islam’ is none other than the esoteric
dimension of the Islam of the common people. One of the sacred texts of Alevism named
the Risāle-i Şeyḫ Safī,26 a member of the group of texts named buyruḳs,27 situates the
_
Ḳızılbaş vis-à-vis the Islamic community according to the ḥadīth al-tafriqa: ‘Bu sırrı ʿārif
anlar ve daḫı Resūlullāh buyurur kim: “Benüm ümmetüm yetmiş üç fırḳadur. Hemān bir fırḳası
cennetlikdür; ol gürūh-ı nācīdürler.” (The gnostic knows this secret. And the Messenger of
God says: “My ummah consists of seventy-three sects one of which will enter heaven. This
is the saved community.”)’28 Thus, in one of its main written documents the Ḳızılbaş
community explicitly situates itself within the ummah and does so in a fundamentally
Islamic manner.
As Sufis also claimed for their own understandings of Islam, historically Alevis saw their
Islam as the esoteric dimension of all religions.29 As in Sufi discourse, the identification
with God allowed the Alevi-Bektashi poet to conceptualize his poetry (or that of his
beloved Alevi-Bektashi saint) as the Word of God. This self-identification with God led to
the adoption of the Sufi genre of the shathiyyah (where the poet has let go of his own self
__
and speaks as God) as a fundamental Alevi-Bektashi genre, although it had largely
disappeared from the Sunni realm before the consolidation of Alevism.30
The poem in Appendix I is one such example, where the poet’s self-identification with
God leads to a reinterpretation of religious history as the poet’s cyclical self-manifestation.
Indeed, with its Quranic references, self-identification with God, and criticism of the
ascetic, the poem cannot be differentiated on any discursive level from a Sufi poem. As
26
The Risāle-i Şeyḫ Safī is located between fol.1b-61a of the manuscript which figures under the name Menāḳıbü’l-esrār
behcetü’l-ahrār at_ Mevlana Museum Ferid Uğur Kitaplığı No. 1172. It is one of the oldest buyruḳ manuscripts (see
_
footnote below). The manuscript contains two dates belonging to 1201(1786) and 1021(1612). It was copied in today’s
Manisa (in Turkey) by a copyist named Mehemmed b. Habib. A number of the poems in Gölpınarlı’s poetry collection
(cited below) come from this manuscript.
27
The word buyruḳ is the general name given to works wherein the pillars of Alevism as well as certain Sufi teachings are
imparted via Quranic citations and numerous tales about Muhammad and Ali b. Abi Talib. This generic name which is
not present in the manuscripts themselves is sometimes used for the entire manuscript (a collection of texts) and
sometimes in regard to the longest treatise in the collection. buyruḳs are considered to be the holiest books of Alevism.
The buyruḳs are separated into two groups, as the teachings of Shaykh Safi or of Imam Jaʿfar. Latest studies on these
texts have demonstrated that they are derivatives of the religious texts brought to Anatolia by Safavid successors for
the indoctrination of the zılbaş, referenced in the Ottoman mühimme defterleri (registers of important affairs); which
have undergone changes, additions, and omissions in the hands of copyists. See Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, ‘Documents
and buyruk Manuscripts in the Private Archives of Alevi Dede Families: An Overview’, British Journal of Middle Eastern
Studies 37/3 (2010): 273–286. For the connection of these texts to Alevi ritual, see Janina Karolewski, ‘Discovering Alevi
Rituals by Analysing Manuscripts: buyruk Texts and Individual Notebooks’, in Transmission Processes of Religious
Knowledge and Ritual Practice in Alevism between Innovation and Reconstruction, ed. Johannes Zimmermann, Janina
Karolewski, and Robert Langer (Berlin et al.: Peter Lang, 2018), 75–106.
28
Risāle-i Şeyḫ Safī, fol. 32b. For versions of this hadith and its role in sectarian divisions in Islam, see Roy P. Mottahedeh,
‘Pluralism and_ Islamic Traditions of Sectarian Divisions’, in Diversity and Pluralism in Islam: Historical and Contemporary
Discourses Among Muslims, ed. Zulfikar Hirji (London-New York: I.B.Tauris, 2010), 31–42.
29
Perhaps the modern claims discussed in the 25th footnote regarding the extremely old historical roots of Alevism is
a distorted version of this common theme, shaped by the replacing of the historical theme’s subtle philosophy with
a pseudo-scientific perspective all too common in popular Alevi discourse.
30
See Zeynep Oktay-Uslu, The şathiyye of Yūnus Emre and ayġusuz Abdāl: The Creation of a Vernacular Islamic Tradition in
__
Turkish’, Turcica 50 (2019): 9–52. Alevi belief and practice consolidated in the 15th and 16th centuries. For a concise
account of the formation of Alevism; see Markus Dressler, ‘Alevīs’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, ed. Kate Fleet, Brill
Online,2015.http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-3/alevis-COM_0167; Ahmet
Karamustafa, ‘Anadolu’nun İslâmlaşması Bağlamında Aleviliğin Oluşumu’, in Kızılbaşlık Alevilik Bektaşilik: Tarih-Kimlik
-İnanç-Ritüel, ed. Yalçın Çakmak and İmran Gürtaş (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2015), 43–54.
8 Z. OKTAY-USLU
it was written by a Bektashi (a member of the order), perhaps this should be expected.
However, the poem in Appendix II attributed to Pir Sultan Abdal (fl. 16th century), one of
the most revered and most widely recited poets in Alevi ritual, relies very much on the
same discursive framework, although in a more vernacularized language.
Both Bektashis and Alevis rely on the doctrine of the Four Gates and Forty Stations (dört
ḳapı ḳırḳ maḳām) to conceptualize their status as God’s elect.31 The Four Gates provide an
overall structure for the different stages of the spiritual path known as the Forty Stations.
The Gates are ordered according to levels of spiritual awareness and perfection. They are
usually set in the following order: Religious Law (şerīʿat), the Path (tarīḳat), Spiritual
_
Knowledge (maʿrifet), and the Truth (haḳīḳat). According to both Bektashis and Alevis, the
_
non-initiated commoners are those in the stage of Religious Law and initiation means
entering the Path. However, conceptualizations diverge from then onwards. While the
Bektashi hierarchy is based on the achievement of spiritual perfection via personal spiritual
effort (in addition to the grace of God), the Alevi hierarchy posits that Alevis, by the very fact
of being born Alevi, are situated in the latest two stages of spiritual perfection.32
The buyruḳ named the Risāle-i Şeyḫ Safī is structured according to the doctrine of the
_
Four Gates.33 In the beginning of the work, we are told that the work is separated into four
parts according to the spiritual levels of the audience:
İmdi bilgil ki şerīʿatı bir fasıl ḳılduḳ ve tarīḳatı bir fasıl ḳılduḳ ve maʿrifeti bir fasıl ḳılduḳ ve haḳī ati
_ _ _ _ _
birfasıl ḳılduḳ. Evvelā şerīʿatı ʿavāmmu’n-nāsa baġladuḳ, tarīḳatı ibtidāya, maʿrifeti müntehāya34
_ _
ve haḳīḳati intihāya baġladuḳ.35
_
Now know that we have composed a chapter on Religious Law, a chapter on the Path,
a chapter on Experiential Knowledge, and a chapter on the Truth. We have devoted the
Religious Law to the commoners, the Path to the beginners, the Experiential Knowledge to
those who have attained the limit and the Truth to the limit itself.
Upon a closer look at the content of the four parts, we see that while the first two parts are in
accord with the notions of Religious Law and the Path in Sufism at large, topics belonging to
the pillars of Alevism are introduced in the fifth section of the third part. We can observe
a significant terminological change in the beginning of the third part (that of Experiential
Knowledge), as Alevi terminology is introduced, and the intended audience changes
accordingly.
The Risāle-i Şeyḫ Safī is based on a Sufi (Safavid) tarīḳatnāme (text expounding the
_ _
pillars of the path) and modifies it to fit the Alevi context.36 In the beginning of the work
31
On the doctrine of the Four Gates, see Zeynep Oktay, ‘Layers of Mystical Meaning and Social Context in the Works of
Kaygusuz Abdal’, in Literature and Intellectual Life in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Anatolia, ed. A.C.S. Peacock and
Sara Nur Yıldız (Würzburg, Ergon Verlag, 2016), 73–99.
32
In Alevi practice, the four gates can signify the following four sets of relations to which the follower (tālib) belongs: 1)
_
guide (rehber) 2) older one (pīr) 3) master (mürşid) 4) companion (musāhib). For the way in which these four
_ _
relationships correlate with certain attributes, as well as with Muhammad, Ali, and God, see Erdal Gezik, ‘How
Angel Gabriel Became Our Brother of the Hereafter (On the Question of Ismaili Influence on Alevism)’, British Journal of
Middle Eastern Studies 43/1 (2016): 62–63.
33
There are seven stations at each gate, instead of ten, resulting in a total of twenty-eight stations. In the beginning of the
work, this layout is linked to the number of letters of the Quran as well as the seven layers of the earth and skies. See
Risāle-i Şeyḫ Safī, fol. 4a.
34
This probably_ has the meaning of müntehī (one who has attained the limit).
35
Risāle-i Şeyḫ Safī, fol. 3a. There is a fifth chapter after the fourth. As it is not mentioned in the initial description of the
_
contents referring to a total of twenty-eight stations, this chapter may be a later addition.
36
For details on this buyruḳ, see Karakaya-Stump, ‘Documents’, 283.
(which discusses how the work is dedicated to people in four separate spiritual levels) as
well as in many other places in the text, the author repeatedly underlines the importance
of speaking to everyone according to their spiritual levels and of keeping the secret
knowledge away from those who are not fit for it. In this sense, the notion of dissimulation
(taḳiyye) central to Alevi theology is also founded on the idea of a Sufi hierarchy.37 The
specific content of Alevi belief and practice is linked to the Sufi spiritual levels of maʿrifet
and haḳīḳat.
_
The idea that Alevis are—due to being born Alevi—in the spiritual gate of haḳīḳat is
_
prevalent among Alevis today.38 This deeply central theological formulation regarding
Alevi identity, as well as the numerous themes of Sufi origin in Alevi poetry show us that
we can easily situate Alevism in the ‘Sufi-Philosophical Amalgam’. However, the Alevi
formulation of the doctrine of the Four Gates also points to a major difference with
Sufism, and thus with Bektashism: The Sufi spiritual hierarchy is abolished for another type
of hierarchy. Spiritual perfection is no longer a result of personal effort. Alevis are a unique
people among Muslims, who have remained in the state of perfection since the Preeternal
Pact.39 This perspective, together with the prevalence of teberrā (dissociation from the
adversaries of the Prophet’s family) in Alevi poetry,40 brings Alevism closer to the strict
existential divisions of early Shiʿism, where people were believed to be divided during the
creation of the world into the armies of ʿaql (the believers, followers of the Imams) and the
armies of jahl (the infidels).41 A similar perspective is put forward by Rıza Yıldırım, who
states that for Alevis, ‘history is a cosmic battle centred on the ahl al-bayt’.42 This cosmic
battle began when Satan refused to prostrate to Adam, thus leading to the creation of two
camps.
The posited difference between Alevism and Bektashism begs the question: Can we
meaningfully distinguish between Bektashi poetry and Alevi poetry? Unfortunately, there
have been no scholarly efforts in this regard. Due to the recitation of the same Alevi-
Bektashi poetic genres in both Bektashi and Alevi ritual, the reading and listening publics
of the poetry may be impossible to differentiate. Even if one poem was initially composed
by a Bektashi dervish, its entrance into the Alevi canon would serve to make it an Alevi
37
While this formulation of taḳiyye draws its discursive content from Sufism, it can also be linked to what Etan Kohlberg
refers to as ‘non-prudential taqiyya’ in the context of Twelver Shi ism, dissimulation which is due to the existence of
a hierarchy of believers and the need to protect the masses from misinterpreting what they cannot understand.
Kohlberg distinguishes ‘non-prudential taqiyya’ from ‘prudential taqiyya’, which is a result of the need to protect oneself
and/or one’s community from danger. See Etan Kohlberg, ‘Taqiyya in Shī ī Theology and Religion’, in Secrecy and
Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions, ed. Hans G. Kippenberg and Guy
G. Stroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 345–80. The two types of taqiyya are difficult to separate in the case of Alevism.
38
An alternative formulation by Alevis is a dual system, where the Sunni commoners are identified with şerīʿat and Alevis
as God’s elect are identified with tarīḳat; see Yıldırım, Geleneksel Alevilik, 181. In this context, the term tarīḳat becomes
_ _
associated with esoteric knowledge.
39
Rıza Yıldırım’s reconstruction of ‘traditional Alevism’ through oral sources shows that Alevis posit an essential difference
between ocaḳzādes (those belonging to the holy lineage, i.e. seyyid families) and the tālib (their adherents). The former
_
are possessors of the light of Muhammad, passed down from generations through blood lines. This light contains the
spiritual knowledge; the adherents are commoners who do not have access to this spiritual knowledge. See Yıldırım,
Geleneksel Alevilik, 159–63. Interestingly, the content of Alevi poetry does not posit such a hierarchy. In contrast, all
members of the saved community are recipients of Muhammad’s light. See the following lines attributed to Kul
Himmet: ‘Seyrān idüp şu ʿālemi gezerken/Uġradum gördüm bir bölük cānları/Cümlesinüñ erkānı bir yolı bir/Mevlām bir
nūrdan yaratmış anları (As I was travelling through this universe/I saw an assembly of souls/They all had the same
pillars, one path/My Lord has created them from one light)’. Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı, ed., Alevî Bektâşî Nefesleri (Istanbul:
İnkılap, 1992) [First edition: Remzi Kitabevi, 1963], 32.
40
For examples, see ibid., 36, 39, 178.
41
See Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Le Guide divin dans le shî’isme originel (Paris: Éditions Verdier, 2007), 92–95.
42
Yıldırım, Geleneksel Alevilik, 206.
10 Z. OKTAY-USLU
poem as well. One possible pathway could be to examine the possible changes in the
prevalence of certain themes according to the Bektashi vs Alevi identities of the poets
(although of course the spectrum of identities linked to Alevism is not limited to these
two, so this may be more complicated than it seems). For now, however, the important
matter is that Alevis see Bektashi poetry as their own and do not distinguish it from Alevi
poetry. Thus, despite the difficulty of ascertaining where it begins and where it ends, it is
clear that Bektashi poetry is a major constituent of Alevi identity.
For the consumers of these Alevi textual and poetic traditions, their Alevi identity was
inextricable from their understandings of Islam. Their self-image was in stark contrast to
their image in the eyes of late-medieval and early modern heresiographers, Ottoman
officials, and Western travellers and missionaries43; as well as to the modern notions of
heterodoxy.44 As the true pre-eternal Muslims, Alevis held themselves to be the core
community of Islam.
Why is Con-Text different from Text?

The Alevi notion of Islam has consequences not only for our conceptualization of Alevism,
but also for our conceptualization of Islam. Shahab Ahmed describes the agency of
Muslims in creating Islam in the following manner:
Islam-beyond-the-individual or Islam-in-the-ummah is, of course, precisely the cumulative,
variegated, integrated and differentiated product of the islām-acts of innumerable Muslim
individuals. In the process of making himself/herself Muslim, the individual makes a discursive
and praxial statement of islām that is that individual’s answer to the question ‘What is
Islam?’—an answer that partially or wholly conforms to or dissents from some previous
answer that is available ‘out there’. With that interpretative action and statement of endorse
ment or disagreement the individual Muslim adds to the admixture of variegation-integration
- differentiation that is out there as ‘Islam’. Simply put, in making him/herself Muslim, the
individual Muslim is not just making islām but is also making Islam.45
Despite its problematic differentiation between religion and culture, a similar notion of
Islam is put forth in Marshall G. S. Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam:
Not only what may be called the religion proper, then, but the whole social and cultural
complex associated with it—indeed, at the most extreme extension, the totality of all the
lifeways accepted among any Muslims anywhere–may be looked on as Islam and seen as
a self-contained whole, a total context within which daily life has proceeded in all its
ramifications. All can, in some sense, be derived as consequent upon the initial posture of
islâm, of personal submission to God.46
43
For the accounts of Western travellers and missionaries, see Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, ‘The Emergence of the Kizilbaş in
Western Thought: Missionary Accounts and Their Aftermath’, in Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage in the Balkans
and Anatolia: The Life and Times of F.W. Hasluck, 1878–1920, vol 1, ed. David Shankland (Istanbul: ISIS Press, 2004),
329–353; Dressler, Writing Religion, 31–77. For Ottoman heresiography and Western travellers’ reports regarding related
dervish groups, see Ahmet T. Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period
1200–1550 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 61–84. For Ottoman persecution of the Alevis, see Colin
Imber, ‘The Persecution of the Ottoman Shi’ites According to the Mühimme Defterleri, 1565–1585 , Der Islam 56/2
(1979): 245–273, among others. For a different perspective on the persecution thesis, see Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer,
‘The Formation of Kızılbaş Communities in Anatolia and Ottoman Responses, 1450 s-1630 s’, International Journal of
Turkish Studies Vol. 20 Nos. 1&2 (2014): 21–47.
44
See Dressler, ‘How to Conceptualize’; Dressler, Writing Religion; 221–27, 260–68.
45
Ahmed, 103. All stresses in the citations from Ahmed’s work are stressed in the original.
46
Hodgson, The Venture of Islam Vol I, 75.
According to this perspective, in making themselves Muslim, Alevis are also making Islam.
As such, our conceptualizations of Islam must account for their notions of Islam as well.
From the outset of his work, Shahab Ahmed claims to put forward a coherent conceptua
lization of Islam (the terms ‘coherent’ and ‘cohere’ frequently stressed by him) wherein the
contradictions among the different conceptualizations of Islam by Muslims can be made
to cohere via a single conceptualization. He explains his aim as follows:
A meaningful conceptualization of ‘Islam’ as theoretical object and analytical category must

come to terms with—indeed, be coherent with—the capaciousness, complexity, and, often,
outright contradiction that obtains within the historical phenomenon that has proceeded
from the human engagement with the idea and reality of Divine Communication to
Muhammad, the Messenger of God.47
_
In the third part of his work, after undertaking an extensive criticism of the conceptualiza
tions which came before him, Shahab Ahmed offers his own conceptualization of Islam as
‘hermeneutical engagement with Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text of Revelation to
Muhammad’.48 Ahmed’s definitions of the concepts within this definition are as follows:
_
Hermeneutical engagement: Engagement by an actor or agent with a source or object of

(potential) meaning in a way that ultimately produces meaning for the actor by way of the
source.49
The Revelation to Muhammad: The Revelation or Communication or Disclosure of Truth from

_
the Unseen-God-beyond-this-world (Allāh) to a human messenger-in-this-world called
Muhammad. The Revelation to Muhammad by what the Qur’ān calls ‘sending-down’ (tanzīl)
_ _
or ‘intimation’ (wahy) from the World-of-the-Unseen (the Qur’ānic ʿālam al-ghayb) issues in
_
a product in the World-of-the-Seen (the ʿālam al-shahādah)—which product is the Text of the
Qur’ān.50
Pre-Text: The Text of the Revelation requires as its premise an Unseen Reality or Truth that lies
beyond and behind the Text of the Revelation-in-the-Seen and upon which the act, Text and truth
of Revelation are contingent. This Unseen Reality is ontologically prior to and alethically (that is,
as regards truth) larger than the textual product of the Revelation: it is the source of
Revelation. The act and text of the Muhammadan Revelation together represent a single
_
historical instance and enactment of this larger and prior dimension of the reality of
Revelation—which I will here term the Pre-text of Revelation.51
Con-Text: Con-Text of Revelation is the body of meaning that is the product and outcome of
previous hermeneutical engagement with Revelation. Con-Text is, in other words, that whole
field or complex or vocabulary of meanings of Revelation that have been produced in the course
of the human and historical hermeneutical engagement with Revelation, and which are thus
already present as Islam.52
An important outcome of Ahmed’s definition is that it leaves room under the category of
‘Islamic’ to those strands of Muslim thought which display direct engagement with the
Pre-Text without recourse to the Quran, most notably philosophy and some strands of
Sufism. Ahmed identifies the philosophers’ Pre-Text with Reason and the Sufis’ Pre-Text
47
Ibid., 6.
48
Ibid., 363.
49
Ibid., 345.
50
Ibid., 346.
51
Ibid., 346–47.
52
Ibid., 356.
12 Z. OKTAY-USLU
with Existence.53 While this expands the definition of ‘Islamic’, it nonetheless does not
diminish the centrality of the Quran in Ahmed’s conceptualization. This is because the
very concept of Pre-Text relies on the notion of Revelation and its multi-dimensionality.
Ahmed does not undertake a lengthy definition of the Text of Revelation, except
stating that he equates it with the Quran (under the definition of the Revelation to
Muhammad).54 Despite being glossed over, the ontological status of the Quran is in fact
central to Ahmed’s conceptualization. While all the other texts which are part of Islam are
considered Con-Text (products of Muslims’ hermeneutical engagements with Islam), the
Quran is the Text. It holds a different ontological status from the other texts produced by
Muslims because of its ‘divine’ status as being revealed to Muhammad by Allah. The
divine status of the Quran is thus linked to the divine status of Muhammad, who is
ontologically different from all other Muslims.
There are thus two interlinked normative claims here, one regarding the Quran and the
other regarding the Prophet. Even though he does not explicitly say so, we can infer that
Ahmed assumes these normative claims to be common to all Muslims. However, else
where in his work, Ahmed deeply criticizes such assumptions. In his critique of prior
conceptualizations of Islam, Ahmed cites Ahmet Karamustafa’s criticism of Khaled Abou El
Fadl’s notion that ‘what all Muslims agree upon’ are the five pillars. In his article named
‘Islam: A Civilizational Project in Progress’, Karamustafa says: ‘The only part of this formula
that stands up to close scrutiny is the shahādah: it would be fair to say that anyone who
does not subscribe to it (of course, after interpreting it in his or her own fashion) cannot be
considered a Muslim’.55 Shahab Ahmed, while agreeing with Karamustafa’s criticism,
underlines that deciding upon this common denominator still does not answer what
people may take the shahādah to mean. In parentheses, he makes this vital comment:
Also, the Shīʿī shahādah contains the further asseveration, ‘I witness that ʿAlī is the Deputed
One [walī] of God’—which is a statement that hardly leaves unaffected the meaning of the
term ‘Messenger [rasūl]’ as applied to Muhammad in the first part of the shahādah.56
_
If even the shahādah cannot be taken as a common normative claim for all Muslims, how
to we expect the unique ontological status of the Quran, on which Ahmed’s entire
conceptualization is based, to be such a claim? Wasn’t the main premise of Ahmed’s
conceptualization that it was beyond the various normative claims made by Muslims?
The basis to the normative claim regarding the Quran’s ontological uniqueness,
enabling us to distinguish between Pre-Text, Text and Con-Text (all of them not so
incidentally including the word Text), is the normative claim that Revelation had
a tangible outcome in the Quran57 and ended with Muhammad. It is thus linked to the
53
See ibid., 348–52.
54
In his review of What is Islam?, Peter Heinegg underlines how little attention Ahmed devotes to Muhammad and the
Quran despite their centrality in his argument; see Peter Heinegg, ‘Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam? The Importance of
Being Islamic Princeton’, Cross Currents 66/3 (2016): 399–402.
55
Ahmet Karamustafa, ‘Islam: A Civilizational Project in Progress’, in Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism,
ed. Omid Safi (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003), 107; cited in Ahmed, 137–138.
56
Ibid., 139.
57
Many Alevis believe the Quran to have been altered, as did the early Shi is. Thus for them the Text at hand is not the
Text of the Quran, which remains unaltered in the Pre-Text (to use Ahmed’s formulation). For references to two
contemporary Alevi accounts, see Markus Dressler, Die alevitische Religion: Traditionslinien und Neubestimmungen
(Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2002), 104, n29. For the Shi i belief and the historical context it stems from, see
Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Le Coran silencieux et le Coran parlant (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2011), 19–20, 50–53, 84–100.
ontological status of Muhammad and the notion of prophecy. In the quotation above,
Ahmed points out that in the Shiʿi shahādah, due to the addition of ʿAliyyun waliyyullāh,
the meaning of the word rasūl is changed. Indeed, in the Shiʿi—and Alevi—shahādah,
the second part of the formula takes its meaning not only from the first part, but also from
the third. The meaning of the word rasūl is thus contingent not only upon the word Allāh,
but also upon the word walī. The relationship between rasūl and walī, between Prophecy
and Friendship with God (or Sainthood), has been a seriously contested issue throughout
Islamic history, and the main scale in the determination of heresy for representatives of
orthodoxy. Due to the scope of the topic, I will only deal with the Alevi notions of
prophecy and sainthood here.
As a result of its non-centralized system (lack of an institution to enforce an Alevi
orthodoxy),58 its historical formation as an umbrella for many different groups, its inter
nalization of doctrinal elements of both Sunni and Shiʿi origin, and the multifarious nature
of its literary canon, Alevism does not have a single stance on the relationship between
prophecy and sainthood. While some classical poets profess the superiority of prophecy
over sainthood, and thus of Muhammad over ʿAli59; the hierarchy may be reversed in
others,60 and yet others may profess their absolute equivalence.61 Moreover, one poet
may navigate between various doctrinal stances in his work, due largely to shifts in the
identity of his intended public.62
A major theme that frequently comes up in Alevi texts is the miracle in which ʿAli and
Muhammad had their heads coming out of the same shirt. The episode can be interpreted
as an enactment of the famous tradition which is known by heart by many Alevis: lahmuka
_
lahmī nafsuka nafsī damuka damī jismuka jismī rūhuka rūhī (your flesh is my flesh; your
_ _ _
blood is my blood; your breath is my breath; your body is my body; your soul is my soul).63
Yemini (d. after 1519) describes the episode in detail in his Fażīlet-nāme.64 First, the heads
58
Indeed, the core aspect of the phenomena taking place in Alevism today is this centralization and the ensuing power
struggles between various institutions intentionally or unintentionally positing their own orthodoxy.
59
For instance, in the Fażīlet-nāme of Yemini (one of the Yedi Ulu Ozanlar [Seven Great Poets], the group of poets most
revered and widely recited in modern Alevism), the superiority of Muhammad over Ali is never in doubt. On
judgement day, Ali is the second after Muhammad to enter paradise. See Dervîş Muhammed Yemînî, Fazîlet-nâme,
ed. Yusuf Tepeli (Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu, 2002), 176. In one long episode,Ali is asked if he is superior to the prophets
Adam, Noah, Salih, Job, Moses, and Jesus. Ali explains one by one why he is superior to each of the prophets. Yet when
the question finally reaches Muhammad, Ali underlines Muhammad’s superiority and states that all beings including
himself were created for the love of Muhammad. He then engages in a long praise of Muhammad which he ends with
an affirmation of their unity. Ibid., 408–18. For another episode which narrates Ali’s superiority over all prophets other
than Muhammad, see ibid., 386–94.
60
The Dīvān of Virani, also one of the Yedi Ulu Ozanlar, offers a striking example of the divination of Ali. The majority of the
references to Ali equate him with God. For direct expressions of this, see Virani, Âşık Viranî Divanı, ed. M. Hâlid Bayrı
(Istanbul: Maarif Kitaphanesi, 1959), 56, 88, 90, 102, 112, 118, 120, 167, 188, 222, 225, 242. Ali is referred to as the
absolute essence (ẕāt-ı mutlaḳ); see Virani, Risāle-i Vīrānī Abdāl, in Hurufi Metinleri I, ed. Fatih Usluer (Ankara: Birleşik
Yayınları, 2014), 183; Virani,_ Divan, 95, 237. Ali is also referred to as God’s essence and attributes (ẕāt u sıfātullāh); see
_
ibid., 56. In a formulation influenced by the doctrine of the oneness of being, Ali is both God and His theophany, both
the Creator and the created, the hidden and the manifest (see ibid., 56, 102, 118). Ali is referred to with the Names of
God (ibid., 101, 118, 167). Quranic verses describing God are used to express that their true object of reference is Ali
(ibid., 59). All of the holy books and the pre-Islamic prophets were sent with the purpose of praising Ali (ibid., 205), who
constituted the object of their knowledge (ibid., 245). The preeternal pact between God and his servants expressed by
the Quranic verse ‘Am I not your Lord? They said, Yes’ (7:172) is also interpreted by Virani to refer to Ali. Ali is thus the
object of faith in all hearts.
61
This is expressed in the creation myth mentioned below.
62
For this quality of Kaygusuz Abdal’s work, see Oktay, ‘Layers of Mystical Meaning’.
63
For a list of hadith collections containing this tradition, see Şaban Çiftçi, ‘Günümüz Alevî-Bektâşî Kültüründe Hadis’ (PhD
diss., Isparta, Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi, 2005), 137–39.
64
See Yemini, Fazîlet-nâme, 515–16.
14 Z. OKTAY-USLU
of Muhammad and ʿAli come out of the same shirt. Then upon the request of those who
are still not convinced of their unity, they show their heads as one and bodies as two.
Lastly, again upon request, they show both their bodies and heads as one. The same
theme also occurs in the Risāle-i Şeyḫ Safī mentioned earlier.65
_
The Alevi creation myth also professes the unity of Muhammad and ʿAli. A story treated
by Yemini common in oral lore establishes Gabriel as the first created being.66 In his
wanderings, Gabriel comes across the light of Muhammad- ʿAli, which is half green and
half white. The white light of ʿAli instructs Gabriel to speak to God with the right words of
worship. Yemini’s notion of the double light of Muhammad and ʿAli has its origins in the
treatment of the same concept in early Shiʿism.67 Accordingly, Yemini states that the light of
Muhammad-ʿAli was transferred from prophet to prophet until it reached the Prophet’s
paternal grandfather ʿAbd al-Muttalib, after which it divided into two. The light of prophecy
reached Muhammad’s father ʿAbd Allah. The light of sainthood reached Abu Talib.68
The most important narrative for Alevis past and present is that of Muhammad’s ascen
sion in which he participates in the Ceremony of the Forty (ḳırḳlar cemʿi), the archetype of
the religious ceremony of the Alevis and Bektashis. According to this narrative, which
contains some variation, Muhammad comes across a lion in his ascension and is demanded
by God to put his ring in the lion’s mouth. On his way back from his ascension, Muhammad
comes across a spiritual gathering. He is only allowed in after he stops referring to himself as
the Prophet, but rather presents himself as a humble servant of God. Inside there are thirty-
nine souls (cān). To prove the unity of the forty saints to Muhammad, one of the forty makes
an incision on ʿAli’s arm, after which all of the forty bleed, including Salman al-
Farisi who is currently outside. On his return Salman brings a single grape, which is crushed
and made into a drink by Muhammad, who serves it to all members of the gathering.
Intoxicated, they all begin dancing the semah (Ar. samāʿ). While dancing, Muhammad’s
turban falls off. It is cut into forty pieces and worn by the souls as belts. When the dancing
ends, Muhammad asks them the name of their spiritual director (pīr) and their guide (rehber),
which they identify as ʿAli and Gabriel respectively. This is when Muhammad learns of ʿAli’s
presence in the ceremony and bows respectfully to him together with the other souls. As
ʿAli passes, Muhammad sees his ring in ʿAli’s mouth.69 The poem in Appendix III by Kul
Himmet (fl. second half of the 16th century–first half of the 17th century) narrates many of
the aspects of this ascension narrative. The first part of the poem contains a creation myth,
which identifies the unified light of Muhammad and ʿAli as the first created being and refers
to ʿAli as Gabriel’s guide, thus making reference to the myth mentioned earlier.
The narrative of the ascension, known by heart by all practicing Alevis, is packed with
doctrinal content. As a whole, it provides the doctrinal basis for the cemʿ ceremony. Here
I will only focus on the narrative’s implications for the Alevi notions of prophecy and
sainthood. The answer to this is not straightforward. What does it mean for Muhammad to
put his ring in ʿAli’s mouth? Does it mean he is designating ʿAli as his successor as the
65
Risāle-i Şeyḫ Safī, fol. 33a.
66
Ibid., 230–33._ The first part of this story which is missing in the Fażīlet-nāme can be found in Gezik, 56–70.
67
See Amir-Moezzi, Le Guide divin, 75–78; 101–110.
68
Yemini, Fazîlet-nâme, 112–113 as well as 361–62. In contrast with the Shi i conception, Yemini’s portrayal of pre-
Muhammadan prophecy and sainthood does not include the existence of Imams who constitute the esoteric dimension
of the transmission of the light, corresponding to the transmission of the exoteric dimension by prophets.
69
For one account of this, see Esat Korkmaz, Alevilik ve Bektaşilik Terimleri Sözlüğü (Istanbul: Anahtar Kitaplar, 2005),
408–411. For a comparative rendering of several oral accounts, see Yıldırım, Geleneksel Alevilik, 325–36.
spiritual ruler of the world? Does it mean he is letting go of his earthly attachments?
Indeed, most Alevis would not be able to answer how to interpret the narrative’s details
but would have no difficulty in offering the appropriate emotional response to them. That
emotional response is what drives the cemʿ ceremony.
Despite the various possible interpretations of the ascension narrative, one thing is certain:
The narrative does not posit the superiority of Muhammad, thus of prophecy. Indeed, the fact
that Muhammad bows to ʿAli reverses their statuses. Muhammad’s encounter with ʿAli in his
ascension demonstrates that Muhammad’s spiritual status is dependent on that of ʿAli. The
fact that Muhammad is required to introduce himself as a humble servant and not as the
Prophet demonstrates that among the saints, prophecy does not hold a special status. The
forty souls are usually referred to as ġayb erenleri (the saints of the realm of the Unseen). The
realm of the Unseen being identical to Shahab Ahmed’s Pre-Text, we can say that from the
perspective of the Pre-Text, prophecy has no significance compared to that of sainthood,
because both saints and prophets (who are also saints) access the Pre-Text in the same
manner.
For Alevis, any text ‘revealed’ to any saint would be ontologically identical to the Quran.
The catch word here is ‘revealed’. By using the very word Revelation (always capitalized by
Ahmed) to refer to the Quran and abstaining from using it for any other text, Ahmed is
making a normative claim, one which would not be meaningful for Alevis despite its
Quranic origin and general acceptance in the Islamic world. The words wahy (revelation)
_
and tanzīl (sending down) are not part of the usual vocabulary of Alevis. For Alevis,
a friend of God (a Perfect Man, insān-ı kāmil) who has become one with God has let go
of his personal agency to act with the agency of Allah. As such, for such a saint, there is no
ontological difference between revelation and inspiration. For this reason, Alevi saints are
called Ḳurʾān-ı nātıḳ (speaking Quran).70 This terminology is used in Shiʿism to refer to the
_
Imams, without whose commentaries the Quran would be ‘silent’.71 Yet in the Shiʿi
context, the distinction between the Muhammadan revelation and the commentaries of
the Imams is an important one (the Imams do not possess wahy). Not only do the Alevis
_
not posit a hierarchy between Muhammad, the Imams, and other saints/friends of God,
but they also believe that their famous saints are none other than the reincarnations of
the Imams (particularly of ʿAli b. Abi Talib).72 For Alevis, the deyiş (Alevi poems) and nefes
(Bektashi poems)73 are the Word of God,74 and in practice, they are revered more than the
Quran.75 This is partly due to the belief regarding the altered status of the Quran.76 It is
70
In addition, the sāz (Turkish lute) which accompanies the performance of poetry in the cemʿ ceremony is referred to as
telli Ḳurʾān (stringed Quran); see Caroline Tee, ‘The Sufi Mystical Idiom in Alevi Aşık Poetry: Flexibility, Adaptation and
Meaning’, European Journal of Turkish Studies [Online] Complete List (2013): 2. http://ejts.revues.org/4683
71
For the notion in Shi ism, see Mahmoud Ayoub, ‘The Speaking Qur’ān and the Silent Qur’ān: A Study of the Principles
and Development of Imāmī Shī’ī tafsīr’, in Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur’ān, ed. Andrew Rippin
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 178–183.
72
In Alevism, the figure of Ali is much more central than the Twelve Imams, although a specific genre of poetry is
dedicated to the latter.
73
The same poem may be referred to as deyiş or nefes depending on context.
74
According to Bektashi leader Bedri Noyan (d. 1997), the recitation of poetry during the cemʿ ceremony is identical in
meaning to the recitation of the Quran by Sunni Muslims; see Bedri Noyan, Bütün Yönleriyle Bektaşîlik ve Alevîlik 3
(Edebiyât 1. Kitap) (Ankara, Ardıç Yayınları, 2000), 18; quoted in Dressler, ‘Turkish Alevi Poetry’, 117.
75
Markus Dressler conceptualizes this as a result of the prevalence of ‘charisma loyalty’ (loyalty towards the religious
leader as mediator to God) over ‘scripture loyalty’, see Dressler, Die alevitische Religion, 17–20.
76
See note 57. In the present day, many Alevis posit the lack of reverence for the Quran as evidence for the need to situate
Alevism outside of Islam.
16 Z. OKTAY-USLU
also due to the fact that, while the Quran has been ‘revealed’ to all Muslims, the deyiş and
nefes are specific to the ‘true Muslims’, what Alevis perceive to be the core community of
Islam. They are thus the truth of the Quran, its bātın (esoteric aspect), its essence.77
_
For Sunni visitors to the Alevi cemʿ, the recital of the Turkish version of the Sūrat al-
Fātihah is a great surprise. It is impossible for them to imagine the Quran as anything
_
other than Arabic. However, for Alevis, revelation is not an event which took place at
a specific space and time, in a specific language. I mean by this not only that revelation is
still ongoing, but also more importantly that revelation is equated in the Alevi doctrine
with the meaning of revelation. Whatever provides access to the meaning of revelation is
the revelation itself. This perspective can be best summarized by the following couplet
attributed to the famous Alevi saint Abdal Musa (fl. 14th century):
Cemīʿ-i Mushafdan niḳābın atdı

__
Ḳurʾān yoḳ gördiler ʿAlīden ġayrı78
He threw off the veil of the entire Quran

They saw that there is no Quran other than ʿAli
This notion is also related to the notion of time and history. The belief in reincarnation,
particularly the reincarnation of ʿAli—most famously as Hacı Bektaş (d. 1271[?]), eponym
of the Bektashi order—results in a non-linear sense of time. Moreover, as the enactment of
the ḳırḳlar cemʿi (ceremony of the forty), the Alevi cemʿ ceremony is perceived and
experienced as a cyclical return to the pre-eternal state of perfection. According to such
a doctrine and experience of time, the idea of the Quran as Text and everything that comes
historically after it as Con-Text is no longer meaningful.
For the poet Virani (fl. end of the 16th century—beginning of the 17th century), ʿAli is
the possessor of all four of the holy books and hence the source of the Quran.79 Similarly,
another poem attributed to Pir Sultan Abdal says: ‘Haḳḳuñ emri ile dört kitāb indi/Oḳuyan
_
Muhammed yazan ʿAlīdür’ (Upon God’s command, four books have come down/
_
Muhammad is the reader, ʿAli is the writer).80 In these examples, ʿAli is equated with
what Ahmed refers to as the Pre-Text of Revelation. Virani also identifies ʿAli with the Sūrat
al-Fātihah,81 which would be the Text of Revelation. Both of these beliefs are common in
_
Alevism. As an actor and object of Muslims’ hermeneutical engagement with Islam, ʿAli
would also be part of the Con-Text. Thus, in the Alevi imagination, there is no ontological
difference between the Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text of Revelation, except that the Pre-
77
Markus Dressler states that according to modern Alevi poetry, God manifests himself ‘in the human being and not in the
Koran’; see Ibid., 113. This may be a modern conceptualization, as the idea of the Quran as manifestation of God is
present in pre-modern poetry.
78
Alevi-Bektaşi Şiirleri Antolojisi 1: 13.-14.-15. Yüzyıl, ed. İsmail Özmen (Ankara: T.C. Kültür Bakanlığı, 1998), 206. In the
edition, the first word of the first verse appears as cemm, which is an error which also disrupts the metre. I have
corrected the error in my rendition. This poem is probably a misattribution; however its value lies not in its relation to
Abdal Musa but in its expression of Alevi thought. For Abdal Musa, see Mehmed Fuad Köprülü, ‘Abdal Musa’, in Türk
Halk Edebiyatı Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Burhaneddin Basımevi, 1935), 60–64 [reprinted with notes and additions by Orhan
F. Köprülü in: Mehmed Fuad Köprülü, ‘Abdal Musa’, Türk Kültürü 124 (1973): 198–207]; Orhan Köprülü, ‘Abdal Musa’,
TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 1 (Istanbul: TDVİA Genel Müdürlüğü, 1988), 64–65; Abdal Musa Velâyetnâmesi, ed.
Abdurrahman Güzel (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1999). The diacritics on all quotations from Turkish are
added by me.
79
Virani, Divan, 225.
80
Pertev Naili Boratav and Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı, eds., Pir Sultan Abdal (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1943), 111. The edition
relies on oral sources.
81
Virani, Divan, 165.
Text is unrevealed and the Text/Con-Text is revealed. This is none other than the binary
between the ʿālam al-ghayb and the ʿālam al-shahādah. Indeed, for many Alevis, ʿAli
represents the oneness of the ʿālam al-ghayb and the ʿālam al-shahādah.82 In the words
of Pir Sultan Abdal, ‘Dünyā yetmiş kere doldı eksildi/Dolduran ʿAlīdür dolan ʿAlīdür’ (The
world has been filled and emptied seventy times/ʿAli is the filler, ʿAli is the filled).83
Going back to Ahmet Karamustafa’s designation of the shahādah as the unit of belief
and practice to which all Muslims adhere, we can make the following modification: If the
addition of the third part of the Shiʿi/Alevi shahādah changes the meaning of the second
part, the only part of the shahādah which is universal for all Muslims ends up being the
first: lā ilāhe illallāh. Indeed, many Alevis view the tawhīd (profession of God’s oneness) as
_
their only common denominator with Sunni Islam. If this is the case, then
a conceptualization of Islam which is to unite the contradictory conceptualizations of all
Muslims under one roof needs to put the tawhīd at its centre, and not the Text of the
_
Revelation.
A conceptualization of Islam based on the tawhīd would also be in line with Hodgson’s
_
above-mentioned account of the plurality of Islam as ‘consequent upon the initial posture
84
of islâm, of personal submission to God’. It is perhaps this very act which is missing from
Shahab Ahmed’s reconceptualization of Islam. A similar point is made by Frank Griffel in
his review article, where he says that Ahmed ‘blocks out the whole question of the
intentionality of the engagement with pre-text, text, or context of the Muslim
revelation’.85 This is what allows Ahmed’s category of ‘Islamic’ to include non-Muslims
while at the same time creating an implicit differentiation between Islam and Islamic.
The primacy of ‘hermeneutical engagement’ over ‘submission to God’ in Ahmed’s
reconceptualization is in part a result of his choice of material. All of the facets of Islam
on which Ahmed builds his conceptualization of Islam are urban and literate. They thus
belong to high culture, the precise high culture which unifies the ‘Balkans-to-Bengal
complex’. As such, Ahmed seems to be fully in accord with the Hodgsonian identification
of Islamic culture with Islamic high culture,86 and indeed does not criticize this aspect of
Hodgson’s thought in his in-depth rebuttal of Hodgson. Ahmed defines hermeneutical
engagement as follows:
Hermeneutical engagement is [. . .] to bring one’s Self into the process of truth-making and
meaning-making from a source [. . .], in other words, to invest one’s Self in the making of
meaning (that is, in the making of consequential truth), and concomitantly to invest or attach
that truth and meaning in the making of one’s Self. (Ahmed 2016, 345)
How does one’s personal agency in creating meaning interact with the collective agency
of the community? How much is the personal notion of the self dependent upon the
82
In his article on Alevi poetry, Dressler says that ‘there is no definite distinction between God and his creatures, for God is
not transcendent’. See Dressler, ‘Turkish Alevi Poetry’, 113; also see Dressler, Die Alevitische Religion, 105, where he
compares this notion to the central place of God’s transcendence in Sunni and Shi i orthodoxy. Indeed, the
immanence of God in Alevi belief is deeply linked to the topics discussed here. Due to the immanence of God in his
creation, souls (cān) can have direct access to his manifestation (i.e. his self-revelation) in this world, without the
mediation of the Prophet or the Quran.
83
Pir Sultan Abdal, 111.
84
Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Vol. I, 75.
85
Frank Griffel, ‘Contradictions and Lots of Ambiguity: Two New Perspectives on Premodern (and Postclassical) Islamic
Societies’, Bustan: The Middle East Book Review Vol. 8 No. 1 (2017): 1–21.
86
See for instance Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Vol. I, 80, 90, 94.
18 Z. OKTAY-USLU
collective self for its creation and perpetuation? These questions, not addressed by
Ahmed, will have different answers for non-urban and non-literate communities where
the collective plays a central role and where meaning is not ‘made’, but always in flux,
dependent on its immediate collective context of production. The individual’s agency in
creating meaning for him/herself will often be mediated by his/her submission to the
collective act of meaning-making (this is of course true for literate urban communities as
well, but it is more pronounced in non-literate closed communities).
Despite the historical importance of its written sources as well as the historical figures
who wrote them, the pre-modern Alevi milieu was largely non-urban and non-literate. It
thus offers us a venue for problematizing Ahmed’s conceptualization of ‘hermeneutical
engagement’. As we saw earlier, the Alevi ascension narrative creates an emotional
response without the need for an articulated hermeneutical response, and indeed
acquires its performative power from its hermeneutical ambiguity. It is this ambiguity
which allows the oral narrative to adapt to each different social context, a process which is
incongruous with the idea of a fixed ‘text’. Indeed, Ahmed’s literate bias can also be
evidenced from his use of the word ‘text’ to define each of his three main sub-
conceptualizations of Islam.
Moreover, as underlined by Griffel, Ahmed’s concept of ‘meaning’, the main term he
uses in defining ‘hermeneutical engagement’, is not clear.87 According to Griffel, this leads
to a definition which is so wide that anything can be considered Islamic. While I disagree
with Griffel in regard to the inclusivity of Ahmed’s definition, I find it important that
Ahmed fails to define meaning (or to define truth, which he views as identical to mean
ing), as this may have alerted him to the literate bias in his formulation of how meaning is
constructed.
Conclusion
The goals of this article have been two-fold: In the first part of this article, I aimed to show
how Alevis formulated their relation to Islam in their textual and oral traditions dating
from the sixteenth century onwards, in order to address whether we can situate Alevism
within the sphere of Islam as defined by Shahab Ahmed. In the second part, I compared
Shahab Ahmed’s conceptualization of Islam to those of Alevis. For both parts, I used as my
source the written corpus belonging to the Ḳızılbaş and related groups, such as buyruḳs,
mathnawīs, dīvāns, and poems in poetry collections (some of which come from oral
sources). As a whole, the article also aims to offer an analysis of the Alevi notion of Alevi-
Bektashi poetry.
Despite current disagreements among Alevis, the pre-modern corpus of texts reveals
that historically Alevis held themselves to be not only Muslims, but the true Muslims, the
holders of the true essence of Islam. The content of Alevi-Bektashi poetry as well as other
sacred texts demonstrate that we can locate Alevism within the discursive field identified
by Ahmed as the ‘Sufi-Philosophical Amalgam’.
By highlighting the agency of Muslims in positing their own normative claims about
Islam and in thus shaping Islam, by underlining the importance of the ‘Sufi-Philosophical
Amalgam’ as a central normative sphere, Shahab Ahmed expands our definition of the
87
Griffel, ‘Contradictions’, 14.
term ‘Islamic’. Indeed, re-evaluations of pre-conceptions about Islam are precisely what
we need if we are to begin focusing on the neglected area of Alevi doctrine, understood in
its historical evolution. As one of the few English language studies on Alevi doctrine to be
based primarily on historical written sources,88 the article at hand aims to complement
the studies on oral sources which analyse the Alevi doctrines of the twentieth and twenty-
first centuries.89 It thus hopes to be a meaningful contribution to an expanding field.
While the studies on Alevism are letting go of their theoretical focus on heterodoxy and
syncretism (although this is a process mostly limited to Western scholarship), Alevism is
coming to be understood as an Islamic tradition with its own claims to normativity. As
self-professed Muslims, authors and consumers of pre-modern Alevi texts can now be
examined as agents in making and defining Islam.
On the other hand, despite its claim to inclusiveness, Shahab Ahmed’s ‘Islamic’ falls
short of encompassing the plurality of Islamic faith and practice. Throughout his work,
Shahab Ahmed frequently uses the expressions ‘the human and historical phenomenon
of Islam’ and ‘human and historical Islam’. The first expression seems to profess a secular
stance, that is an academic definition of Islam which will make sense for the non-Muslim.
However, the expression ‘human and historical Islam’ implies that there is an Islam which
is other than ‘human and historical’. This reveals an intent visible in the entirety of his
argument: He wants his conceptualization of Islam to be meaningful to believers and
unbelievers alike.
The case of Alevism demonstrates that Shahab Ahmed’s conceptualization of Islam as
‘hermeneutical engagement with Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text of Revelation to
Muhammad’ contains an implicit normative claim: that Revelation ended with
_
Muhammad, and its outcome—the Text of the Quran—was thus ontologically unique.
_
Not only is this normative claim not meaningful for Alevis, it would also not be meaningful
for non-Muslims. As a result, Ahmed’s definition of Islam cannot be called ‘human and
historical’, as it is founded on a theological category based on an element of faith
regarding the divine.
According to Ahmed, contradiction itself is inherently Islamic, because it ‘inheres to
and coheres with the spatial-structural dynamic of Revelation to Muhammad’.90 However,
_
for Alevis, the ‘spatial-structural dynamic of Revelation to Muhammad’ is not that of Pre-
Text, Text, and Con-Text. This is because, for Alevis, there is no meaningful difference
between the Text and the Con-Text, the text of the Quran and the texts produced by
Muslim saints, most notably Alevi-Bektashi poetry. Both of these are revealed (that is
made visible, brought to the ʿālam al-shahādah) through the agency of God. This
ontological sameness is based on the unity of prophecy and sainthood, between which
there is either no hierarchy, or one that claims the superiority of the latter.
One objection to my argument here could be that Ahmed never asserts that various
conceptualizations of Islam perceive themselves as coherent with other conceptualiza
tions. Indeed, he asserts just the opposite: That his new reconceptualization can reveal the
88
In this regard, see Ahmet Karamustafa’s analysis of Şah İsma il’s poetry, which exemplifies a divinization of Ali
similar to the examples above; Ahmet T. Karamustafa, ‘In His Own Voice: What Hatayi Tells Us About Şah İsmail’s
Religious Views’ in L’Ésotérisme Shi’ite, ed. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 601–11.
89
In contrast to Rıza Yıldırım’s claim in his Geleneksel Alevilik, oral sources (despite their indisputable value) cannot on their
own give us an accurate picture of Alevism prior to the twentieth century.
90
Ahmed, 366.
20 Z. OKTAY-USLU
way in which these contradicting conceptualizations cohere. However, due to his focus on
Sunni Islam, Ahmed constructs a conceptualization which cannot make Alevism cohere
with Sunni Islam. As such, his conceptualization ends up being yet another partial
conceptualization claiming to stand for the whole.
The case at hand powerfully demonstrates the importance of Islamic traditions such as
Alevism for speaking meaningfully about Islam at large. Such traditions, including those of
the Ahl-i haqq, ʿAlawīs, Druzes, etc., have been largely overlooked by the field of Islamic
_
Studies, despite the large number of adherents of some of them. As we are abandoning
centre/periphery and orthodoxy/heterodoxy models for understanding religions, we are
in desperate need of new theoretical outlooks. Ahmed’s exposition of the discursive
biases of previous conceptualizations of Islam is an important starting point, as is his
effort to conceptualize Islam in its own terms. However, his effort shows us that the choice
of those terms can be a normative and therefore political act. Indeed, such an act is
precisely what Ahmed is trying to avoid throughout his work.
We should also ask ourselves: Why do we need contradicting claims about Islam to
cohere? I agree with Ahmed fully when he says that pre-modern Muslims were making
‘coherent meaning for the self in terms of Islam’.91 I also agree with him when he says that
it is ‘difficult for the practitioners of modern Islam to conceptualize pre-modern Islam in
a manner that coheres with a human and historical phenomenon that they conceptualize
as Islam’.92 However, the loss of coherence goes much beyond this: Modern Muslims, to
the extent that they have become embedded in the global neo-liberal system with their
actions and desires, have also come to find it difficult to make ‘coherent meaning for the
self in terms of Islam’, precisely because they are living in two conflicting value systems. As
such, coherence may no longer be a necessary, or even meaningful, goal for Muslims (and
thus Islam) in the twenty-first century. As scholars, we need to refrain from making value
judgements and claiming these Muslims are ‘less Muslim than’ the pre-Modern Muslims
for whom the world and the self both cohered. My point is: The need for coherence
embodies a value judgement which is no longer as relevant as it used to be. One interesting
aspect of Alevism is that it never put too much emphasis on cohering, a main reason for its
modern label of ‘syncretism’. Perhaps modern humans have come to the realization that
they cannot avoid being ‘syncretic’ after all.
Acknowledgments
My gratitude goes to Ulaş Özdemir, Ahmet Karamustafa, and Derin Terzioğlu for reading and
commenting on my article; İpek Hüner Cora, Aslıhan Gürbüzel, and Ulaş Özdemir for recommending
me some of the readings which made contributions to my article; and Doğan Bermek and Erdal
Gezik for sharing their valuable insights about Alevism with me. I would also like to thank Nile Green
for the inspiring discussions which have led me to take on this subject.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
91
Ibid., 537.
92
Ibid., 537.
Appendices
Appendix 1a
Kaf u nūn ḫitābı izhār olmadan Before the allocution of kaf and nūn was made manifest
_ _
Biz bu kāʾinātuñ ibtidāʾsıyuz We were the beginning of this universe
Kimseler vāsıl-ı dīdār olmadan Before anyone had attained the contemplation [of God]
_
Ol kābe ḳavseynin ev ednāsıyuz We were the or less of the two bows’ distanceb
Yoḳ iken Ādemle Havvāʾ ʿālemde Before Adam and Eve were in the world
Haḳḳ ile haḳḳ idük_ sırr-ı mübhemde We were the truth with the Truth in the obscure secret
_
Bir gececik_ mihmān ḳalduḳ Meryemde We were guests at Mary’s for one night only
Hażret-i ʿĪsānuñ öz babasıyuz We are the true fathers of Jesus
_
Bize peder dedi tıfl-ı Mesīhā The child Messiah called us father
_
Rabbi erinī diyü _çaġırdı Mūsā c
Moses called out my Lord, show me
Len terānī diyen biz idük aña We were the ones who replied you can never see me
Biz T ūr-ı Seynāʾnuñ tecellāsıyuz We are the theophany of Mount Sinai
_
Küntü kenz remzinüñ olduḳ āgāhı We became aware of the sign of I was a treasure
Haḳḳu’l-yaḳīn gördük cemālullāhı We saw God’s beauty with the truth of certainty
_
Ey ḫoca bizdedür sırr-ı ilāhī O teacher! We are the holders of the divine secret
Biz Hacı Bektaşuñ fuḳarāʾsıyuz We are the poor ones of Hacı Bektaş
_
Zāhidā şānumuz innā fetahnā O ascetic! Our glory is surely we have given a victory
_
Ḫarābī kemteri serserī sanma Do not mistake lowly Harabi for a vagabond
_
Bir ḳılı ḳırḳ yarar kāmilüz ammā We are Perfect Ones who care for minute detail
Pīr Balım Sultānuñ budalāʾsıyuz But we are the abdāls of the master Balım Sultan
_
a
Gölpınarlı, 233–234. According to Gölpınarlı, it is impossible to find a Bektashi who would not know this poem by heart;
see Ibid., 12.
b
Arabic phrases (Quranic citations and others) within the Turkish text are italicized in the translation.
c
This verse does not fit the syllabic metre.
Appendix 296
Bizden selām olsun sofu cānlara Greetings from us to the souls of the ascetics
_
Vücūduñ şehrini yuyanlar gelsün Those shall come who have washed the city of being
Yedi ḳat göklerüñ yedi ḳat yerüñ Those shall come who have built the building of power
Ḳudret bināsını ḳuranlar gelsün Of the seven layers of the heavens and the seven layers of the earth
Sofu dedikleri bir ḳolay işdür What they call asceticism is an easy job
_
Erenler gördügi bir engin düşdür What the perfect ones see is a boundless dream
Eti yoḳ ḳanı yoḳ bir uçar ḳuşdur It is a flying bird with no meat and no blood
O ḳuşun adını bilenler gelsün Those shall come who know the name of that bird
Pīrümi sorarsañ ʿAlīdür ʿAlī If you ask my master, it is Ali
Altından_ çaḳılmış Düldülüñ naʿlı Duldul’s horseshoe was nailed with gold
Kim sürdi ḳuyuda ḳırḳ arşın yolı Who was it that followed a path of forty Turkish yards in the well?
Bu yoluñ erkānın bilenler gelsün Those shall come who know the pillars of this path
Pīr Sultānum eydür özüm dīdārda My Pir Sultan says my essence is in the contemplation [of God]
_
Saḳlıyalum Haḳḳ ḳatında nazarda Let us hide in sight in the presence of God
_
Çıḳmadı cān_ ḳazılmaduḳ mezārda
_
The soul does not leave the body before the grave is dug
O cānuñ namāzın ḳılanlar gelsün Those shall come who have prayed the funeral prayer of that soul
a
Pir Sultan Abdal, 104–105. This poem is also attributed to Hatayi.
22 Z. OKTAY-USLU
Appendix 3a
Zāhid hū demeyi inkār eyleme O ascetic! Do not deny saying Heb

Yā niçün çaġırur insān hū diyü Why does a person call out He?
Hū demenüñ aslı nedür nedendür What is the basis of saying He?
Eyliyeyüm saña_ beyān hū diyü Let me explain to you by saying He
Evvel hū āḫır hū Allāhu ekber The First is He, the Last is He, God is the greatest
Cemāli şemʿinden doġdı bir gevher A jewel was born from the candle of His Beauty
Muhammed Mustafā Şāh İmām Haydar Muhammad Mustafa [and] King Imam Haydar
Oldı_ ol gevherden __
ʿiyān hū diyü _ Appeared from this jewel saying He
O cevher eridi bir cūşa geldi That jewel melted and overflowed
Tecellī erişdi çü başa geldi Theophany spread as it happened
Çarḫ-ı felek anda cünbişe geldi At that moment the sphere of the heavens began to move
Dem bu demdür döner devrān hū diyü This is the moment, the heavensc revolve by saying He
Muhammed Mustafā peyġāmber oldı Muhammad Mustafa became prophet
ʿAlī _evliyāʾya hem __
rehber oldı Ali became the guide to the friends of God
Şāhum Cebrāʾīle hem rehber oldı My king also became a guide to Gabriel
Ol demde ḳuruldı erkān hū diyü The pillars of the faith were set at that time by saying He
Anlar ʿāşıḳ idi yār yāre ḳarşu Those men were in love, the beloveds were face to face
Nāz u niyāz idüp settāra ḳarşu They were supplicating to the Veiler
Nice yüz biñ yıllar dīdāra ḳarşu So many hundreds of thousands of years contemplating the face of God
Baḳdılar ḳaldılar hayrān hū diyü They looked and remained stupefied, saying He
_
Mustafā Murtażā bir idi anda In there Mustafa and Murtaza were one
__
Erenler gizlidür ol lā-mekānda The Perfect Men are hidden in that non-space
Lā fetā oḳuyup ḳarşu duranda As they spoke there is no hero and stood facing him
Yedi kez çaġırdı sultān hū diyü The sultan called out seven times saying He
_
Bir üzüm dānesi ol şāh elinde A single grape in that king’s hand
Ḳırḳlara sunardı ḳısmet güninde He would serve it to the forty on the day of distribution
_
Ol Habībullāha miʿrāc yolında To God’s beloved, on the way to his ascension
_
Şeydullāh eyledi Selmān hū diyüd Salman went looking for food, saying He
Bir üzüm dānesi getürdi Selmān Salman brought a single grape
Ḳırḳlar da ol demde oldılar ʿuryān At that moment the forty became naked
Muhammed şerbetin içince iy cān O soul, when Muhammad drank the juice
Sāḳī_ ḳadeh sundı mestān hū diyü As cup-bearer he distributed the drink, intoxicated, saying He
_ _
Ḳırḳlar ol şerbetden içdi mest oldı The forty drank from that juice, became drunk
Cümle evliyāʾya ʿAlī üst oldı Ali became superior to all the friends of God
Setir-pūşe baġlandı kemer-best oldı The headdress was tied, worn as belts
Semāʿa girdiler ʿuryān hū diyü They entered the ritual dance naked, saying He
Ḳırḳlaruñ birine nīşter uruldı An incision was made on one of the forty
Aḳdı ḳan varlıġı is̱ bāt olundı The blood flowed, their existence was proved
Anda Haḳḳ mevcūdda mevcūd görüldi There the Truth was seen present in the present
_
Huvallāh çaġırdı ʿirfān hū diyü Experiential knowledge called out He is God, saying He
Hū demenüñ aslı böyledür böyle This is the basis of saying He
Zāhid ne sözüñ_ var gel berü söyle O ascetic, what words do you have, come and tell me
Īmānın tāzele şehādet eyle Renew your faith, be a witness
Gel sen de bu renge boyan hū diyü Come and take on this colour, saying He
Ḳul Himmet bu meyden ser-ḫoş olalı Since Kul Himmet has become intoxicated with this wine
Cān gözi tecellīye dūş olalı Since the eye of his soul has fallen on theophany
Ol Habībullāha medhūş olalı Since he has become bewildered at God’s Beloved
_
Ḫayāli gözinde mihmān hū diyü The Beloved’s vision is a guest in his eyes, saying He
a
Gölpınarlı, 165–166.
b
For the invocation hū originating from the Arabic pronoun huwa (he), see Osman Türer, ‘Hû,’ Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm
Ansiklopedisi Vol. 18 (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1998), 260–261.
c
The poet is also referencing a second meaning of the word devrān, signifying the passage of time, thus juxtaposing it
with living in the moment, a major Sufi tenet.
d
The replacement of ‘şeydullāh’ common in oral lore with ‘şeyʾullāh’ in Gölpınarlı’s recension is probably a mistake.
e
A corrupted version of ser-pūş.

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British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbjm20

Alevism as Islam: rethinking Shahab Ahmed’s

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