ملخص الجهاز:
Ottoman Ulema, Turkish Republic: Agents of Change and Guardians of Tradition Amit Bein Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.
Much has been written about religion and secularism in Turkey over the past decades, but detailed histories of the late Ottoman and modern Turkish ulema have been few and far between.
Therefore, this recent book by Amit Bein is a welcome and a much needed contribution to the literature on the Turkish ulema and to the literature on religion in modern Turkey in general.
The portion on the modern- ization of the late Ottoman madrasahs is particularly interesting as it shows the fissures between various ulema factions particularly between the actual stu- dents in the madrasahs, who largely favored the reformed system, and the con- servative ulema, who wanted to reverse the reforms and oppose all challenges to the ulema’s political and social position.