LAUSR

Ayfer Karakaya-Stump has located, translated, and analyzed previously unpublished source materials from the private archives of Anatolian Alevi families to offer a reconceptualization of the formation of the Ottoman Kizilbash-Alevi milieu in The Kizilbash-Alevis in Ottoman Anatolia: Sufism, Politics and Community. The book, part of the Edinburgh Studies on the Ottoman Empire series, embraces an historical framework to present the “central thesis that the basic doctrinal, devotional and organisational features of Kizilbashism/Alevism must be sought within Sufism broadly defined” (48). While the Safavid order in Iran and the Bektashi order in Ottoman lands are often discussed in relation to Alevi history and praxis, Alevi-held documents themselves reveal ties to Sufi and dervish circles that precede these imperially-affiliated orders. Based on findings from these sources, Karakaya-Stump presents a complex series of historical and political events and intra-Muslim exchanges, within which Kizilbash-Alevi identity solidified in response to confessional and persecutory pressures in the sixteenth century. Kizilbash-Alevi spiritual lineages (ocaks) emerged as a significant socio-religious network in the Islamic milieu of Ottoman Anatolia. Ocak families regularly sought to obtain verified genealogical documents to certify the seyyid authority of male lineage heads, which linked them to the genealogy of the family of the Prophet Muhammad and his son-in-law Ali. Certain scholarly paradigms and oversights long resulted in suggestions that Alevis lacked such documentary archives, but the Alevi cultural revival of the 1980s and 90s facilitated the publication of Alevi MESA R o M E S 54 2 2021