Borderlands in Islamic and Ottoman History

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Level: 
Master's
CEU credits: 
4
Academic year: 
2009/2010
Semester: 
Winter
Start and end dates: 
9 Nov 2009
Co-hosting Unit(s) [if applicable]: 
Department of History
Stream/Track/Specialization/Core Area: 
Culture, Religion and Intellectual History in a Comparative Perspective
CEU Instructor(s): 
Tolga U. Esmer
Additional information: 
Required Readings: - Michael Bonner, ed. Arab-Byzantine Relations in Early Islamic Times - Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds - Richard Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 - Coursepack
Learning Outcomes: 
This course will acknowledge the diversity within Islamic community and study specific social groups that congregated in the frontier areas, such as the fighters of “greater jihad” (mystics, Sufis) who in the early Muslim ribats shared space with the fighters of “lesser” jihad (frontier soldiers), the futuwwa and ahi brotherhoods of pre-Ottoman Anatolia, the gazis and the akritai on the Ottoman-Byzantine border, etc. The course will focus on select case studies ranging from Spain to China. Students will be introduced to the historical and anthropological literature on the concept of “frontiers” and “borderlands,” as well as to the concepts of “conversion,” “syncretism,” “hybridity” and “creolization” crucial to studying inter-confessional contact zones. Being a course on borderlands and borderland milieus, this course will naturally compare and contrast Empires – especially the Ottomans with their Islamic predecessors as well as the Ottomans and their Byzantine, Safavid/Qajjar, Hapsburg, and Russian rivals.
Assessment : 
•Attendance in all class meetings is mandatory. Any unexcused absence will result in an automatic decrease of the final grade by half a letter grade. •Participation: 10% •Multiple (depending on class size) presentations of weekly readings: 20%Short paper (5-7 pages): 10% •3 Response Papers: 80% – 1st 3 pages (10%); 2nd – 4-5 pages (20%); 3rd 10-12 pages (50%).
Full description: 

Week 1: Frontiers in Question—Models of Inquiry

--Daniel Power, “Frontiers: Terms, Concepts, and the Historians of Medieval and Early Modern Europe” in Frontiers in Question Eurasian Borderlands, 700-1700 (London: Macmillan Press, 1999), 1-12. [savepdf /1st part]

--Naomi Standen, “Nine Case Studies of Pre-modern Frontiers,” in D. Power and N. Standen (eds.), Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700-1700 (London: Macmillan Press, 1999), 13-31.[savepdf /2nd part]

--Dan Jones, “The Significance of the Frontier in World History,” History Compass 1/1 (2003) [savepdf]

--Katherine Pratt Ewing, “Crossing Borders and Transgressing Boundaries: Metaphors for Negotiating Multiple Identities,” Ethos 26(2): 262-67 [savepdf]

--R. W. Brauer, “Boundaries in the Arabo-Islamic Geographic and Historical Texts” in Boundaries and Frontiers in Medieval Muslim Geography (1995) New Series, Vol. 85, No. 6 (1995), 1-73. [savepdf]

Further Readings:

-- Frederick Jackson Turner.  The Frontier in American History (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1921).

--Paul Wittek.  The Rise of the Ottoman Empire: Studies on the History of Turkey, 13th-15th Centuries (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1938).

Unit 1: Arab-Byzantine Frontier 7th-13th Centuries 

The Emergence of the thughur

Readings:

--M. Bonner.  “Introduction: Byzantine-Arab Relations,” in M. Bonner (ed.), Arab-Byzantine Relations in Early Islamic Times (London: Ashgate Variorium, 2005), xiii-xliii (30 pp.) [savepdf]

--H.A.R.Gibb.  Arab-Byzantine relations under the Umayyad Caliphate” in M. Bonner (ed.), Arab-Byzantine Relations in Early Islamic Times (London: Ashgate Variorium, 2005), 65-79 [savepdf]

--J.F. Haldon and H. Kennedy. “The Arab-Byzantine frontier in the 8th and 9th centuries: military organization and society in the borderlands,” in M. Bonner (ed.), Arab-Byzantine Relations in Early Islamic Times (London: Ashgate Variorium, 2005), 141-178 [savepdf]

--Thomas Sizgorich, “Narrative and Community in Islamic Late Antiquity,” Past & Present 185 (2004): 9-42 (optional) [savepdf]

--Michael Bonner.  Chapter 1 “ Introduction” and Chapter 8 “Empires, Armies, and --Frontiers,” in his Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practices (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 1-19 and 118-156. [savepdf]

Further Readings:

--F. Donner.  “Muhammad and the Caliphate: Political History of the Islamic Empire up to the Mongol Conquest,” in J. Esposito (ed.), The Oxford History of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 199), 1-62. [Recommended for Background] [savepdf]

--Michael Bonner.  Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies on the Jihad and the Arab-Byzantine Frontier. New Haven: American Oriental Society Monograph Series, 1996

Cultural Exchange along the Arab-Byzantine Frontier

Readings:

--Suliman Bashear, “Polemics and Images of the 'Other': Apocalyptic and other materials on Early Muslim-Byzantine wars: a review of Arabic sources” [savepdf]

--John Meyendorff, “Byzantine views of Islam” [savepdf]

--Ahmad M.H. Shboul, “Byzantium and the Arabs: the image of the Byzantines as mirrored in Arabic literature” [savepdf]

--Gustav E. von Grunebaum, “Parallelism, convergence and influence in the relations of Arab and Byzantine philosophy, literature and piety”

--Digenis Akritas: The Two-Blood Border Lord, trans. By D.B. Hull (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1972), 1-71 (Books 1-5). [savepdf]

Further Readings:

--Hugh Kennedy.  The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In (New York: De Capo Press, 2007).

--P. Stephenson.  Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900-1204 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

PAPER #1 DUE IN CLASS

 

UNIT 2: The Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, 7th-15th Centuries

 

The Iberian Peninsula as a Borderland—the Challenges of “Convivencia”

--Thomas Glick. “Introduction,”in his Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2005), On-Line Version:

http://libro.uca.edu/ics/emspain.htm

--Eduardo Manzano Moreno. “The Creation of a Medieval Frontier: Islam and Christianity in the Iberian Peninsula, Eighth to Eleventh Centuries” in D. Power and N. Standen (eds.), Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700-1700 (London: Macmillan Press, 1999), 32-54 [savepdf]

--Simon Barton. “Traitors to the Faith? Christian Mercenaries in al-Andalus and the Maghreb, 1100-1300,” in R. Collins and A. Goodman (eds.), Medieval Spain: Culture, Conflict, and Coexistence (Palgrave Macmillan: 2002), 23-45 [savepdf]

--Teofilo Ruiz. “Trading with the ‘Other’: Economic Exchanges between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Late Medieval Northern Castile” in R. Collins and A. Goodman (eds.), Medieval Spain: Culture, Conflict, and Coexistence (Palgrave Macmillan: 2002), 63-78  [savepdf]

 --David Nirenberg. “Introduction” and Chapter 5 “Sex and Violence between Majority and Minority,” in his Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 3-17 and 127-165.[savepdf]

--Poem of the Cid – Spanish Verse and English Translation with Introduction by W.S. Merwin (New York: Meridian Press, 1975).  [Read English Only!] [savepdf]

Further Readings:

--Janina Safran.  The Second Umayyad Caliphate: The Articulation of Caliphal Legitimacy in Al-Andalus (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).

--Peter Sahlins.  Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

North Africa

--Andrew C. Hess.  Ch. 1 “The Ibero-African Frontier,” Ch. 3 “North Africa and the Atlantic,” and Ch. 4 “Islam Resurgent,” in his The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978), 1-10 and 26-70. [savepdf]

--Natalie Z. Davis. “Introduction: Crossings,”Ch. 1 “Living in the Land of Islam,” Ch. 4 “Between Africa and Europe,” Ch. 6 “Between Islam and Christianity” in her Trickster Travels: A Sixtenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 3-54, 109-124, and 153-190. [savepdf]

Further Readings:

--Amira K. Bennison. “Liminal States: Morocco and the Iberian Frontier between the Twelfth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Julia Ann Clancy-Smith (ed.),  North Africa, Islam, and the Mediterranean World: From the Almoravids to the Algerian War (Oxon: Frank Cass Publishers, 2005), 11-29

--James A. Miller. “Trading Through Islam: the Interconnections of Sijilmasa, Ghana and the Amoravid Movement,” in Julia Ann Clancy-Smith (ed.),  North Africa, Islam, and the Mediterranean World: From the Almoravids to the Algerian War (Oxon: Frank Cass Publishers, 2005), 11-29. 

UNIT 3: India and Bengal

 

Islamic Frontiers in Hindistan

--Richard Eaton. “Introduction,” Ch. 3 “Early Sufis of the Delta,” Ch. 5 “Mass Conversion to Islam: Theories and Protagonists,” Ch. 6 “The Rise of Mughal Power,” and Ch. 7 “Mughal Culture and its Diffusion,” in his The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), xxi-xxvii, 71-94, 113-136, 137-158, and 159-193 [savepdf]

--David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence. “Introduction,” in D. Gilmartin and B. Lawrence (eds.), Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 1-20. [savepdf]

--Christopher Schackle. “Beyond Turk and Hindu: Crossing the Boundaries in Indo-Muslim Romance,” “Introduction,” in D. Gilmartin and B. Lawrence (eds.), Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 55-73. [savepdf]

--Muzaffar Alam.  “Shari‘a and Governance in the Indo-Islamic Context,” in D. Gilmartin and B. Lawrence (eds.), Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 216-245. [savepdf]

--Vasudha Narayanan.  “Religious Vocabulary and Regional Identity: A Study of the Tamil Cirappuranam,” in D. Gilmartin and B. Lawrence (eds.), Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 74-97. [savepdf]

Further Readings:

--Kumkum Chattarjee.  The Cultures of History in Early Modern India: Persianization and Mughal Culture in Bengal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

--Richard M. Eaton.  “Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States,” in D. Gilmartin and B. Lawrence (eds.), Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 246-281. [savepdf]

-- Marcia K. Hermansen and B. Lawrence. “Indo-Persian Tazkiras as Memorative Communications,” “Introduction,” in D. Gilmartin and B. Lawrence (eds.), Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 149-175.

--Muzaffar Alam.  The Languages of Political Islam: India – 1200-1800 (London: Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2004.

PAPER #2 DUE IN CLASS

 

UNIT 4:Ottoman Borderlands

 

Ottoman-Byzantine Frontier

--Colin Heywood. “The Frontier in Ottoman History: Old Ideas and New Myths,” in D. Power and N. Standen (eds.), Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700-1700 (London: Macmillan Press, 1999), 228-250. [savepdf]

--Cemal Kafadar.  Introduction and Ch. 2 “The Sources,” in his Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 1-19 and 60-117. [savepdf]; [savepdf]

--G. Arnakis.  “Futuwwa Traditions in the Ottoman Empire: Akhis, Bektasi Servishes, and Craftsmen,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4 (October, 1953), 232-247. [savepdf]

--K. Barkey.  Chapter 1 “Introduction,” Chapter 2 “Emergence: Brokerage across Networks,” Chapter 3 “Becoming an Empire: Imperial Institutions and Control,” in her Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1-108. [savepdf]

Further Readings:

--Dimitris Kastritis.  “Religious Affiliation and Political Alliances in the Ottoman Succession Wars of 1402-1413,” in Medieval Encounters 13 (2007), 22-242.

--  R. Lindner.  Nomans and the Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983).

--E. Zachariadou, “Religious Dialogue between Byzantines and Turks during the Ottoman Expansion.”  In Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, edited by B. Lewis and F. Niewohner (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Press, 1992), 289-304. 

--  P. Stephenson.  Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900-1204 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

--Claude Cohen, “Futuwwa,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd Edition, On-line Version.

--Heath Lowry.  The Nature of the Early Ottoman State (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003).

Ottoman-Safavid (and Qajar) Borderlands and Beyond

-- Rudi Matthee.  “The Resumption of Ottoman-Safavid Border Conflict, 1603-1638: Effects of Border Destabilization on the Evolution of State-Tribe Relations.” Orientwissenschaftliche Hefte 5 (2003), pp. 151-170. [savepdf]

-- Rudi Matthee. “The Safavid-Ottoman Frontier: Iraq-i Arab as Seen by Safavids,” International Journal of Turkish Studies, 9/1-2 (2003), 157-173. [savepdf]

-- Sabri Ateş.  “Introduction,” Chapter V “The Sheykh, the Shah, and the Sultan: Rebellion in the Borderland,” and Chapter VI “The Aftermath of the Rebellion: Establishing the Shi‘i State’s Supremacy” in his Empires at the Margin: Towards a History of the Ottoman-Iranian Borderland and the Borderland Peoples, 1843-1881 (Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University, 2006), 1-31; 316-368 and 369-433. [savepdf]

-- Karen Barkey.  Ch. 4 “Maintaining Empire: An Expression of Tolerance,” in her Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 109-153.[savepdf]

Further Readings:

-- T. Krstic.  “Illuminated by the Light of Islam and the Glory of the Ottoman Sultanate: Narratives of Conversion to Islam in the Age of Confessionalization,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 51/1 (January 2009), 35-63.

-- Markus Dressler.  “Inventing Orthodoxy: Competing Claims for Authority and Legitimacy in the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict.”  In Legitimizing the Order—The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power, edited by H. Karateke and M. Reinkowski. 151-176. Leiden: Brill, 2005. 

-- R. Hattox.  “Mehmed the Conqueror, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Mamluk Authority, in Studia Islamic, No. 90 (2000), 105-123.

--Kathryn Babayan.  Preface and Chapter  5 “Abu Muslim—the Victim of the Waning of the Qizilbash,” in her Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), xv-xlvi (32 pages, too much…) and 121-160 

The Ottoman-Habsburg Borderlands

--William McNeill.  “Introduction” and Ch. 5 “The Closure of the Frontier,” in his Europe’s Steppe Frontier, 1500-1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 1-14 and 181-220 [savepdf]

-- Gabor Agoston.  “A Flexible Empire: Authority and its Limits on the Ottoman Frontiers,” in K. Karpat with R. Zens (Eds.), Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities, and Political Changes (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2003), 15-32. [savepdf]

--Pal Fodor.  “Making a Living on the Borders: Volunteers in the Sixteenth Century Ottoman Army” in his In Quest of the Golden Apple: Imperial Ideology, Politics, and Military Administration in the Ottoman Empire (İstanbul: İsis Press, 2000), 275-304. [savepdf]

--Pal Fodor.  “Introduction,” in G. David and P. Fodor (eds.), Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Early Fifteenth – Early Eighteenth Centuries) (Leiden: Brill Press, 2007), xi-xx. [savepdf]

--Geza Palfy.  “Ransom slavery along the Ottoman-Hungarian frontier in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” in G. David and P. Fodor (eds.), Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Early Fifteenth – Early Eighteenth Centuries) (Leiden: Brill Press, 2007), 35-84. [savepdf]

--Zsuzsanna J. Ujvary.  “A Muslim Captive’s Vicissitudes in Ottoman Hungary (Mid-Seventeenth Century),” G. David and P. Fodor (eds.), Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Early Fifteenth – Early Eighteenth Centuries) (Leiden: Brill Press, 2007), 141-168. [savepdf]

Further Readings:

-- Mark Stein.  Guarding the Frontiers: Ottoman Border Forts and Garrisons in Europe (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007).

--Gabor Agoston.  “Information, ideology, and limits of imperial policy: Ottoman grand strategy in the context of Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry,” in V. Aksan and D. Goffman (eds.), The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 75-103.

--Pal Fodor.  “The View of the Turk in Hungary: The Apocalyptic Tradition and the Red Apple in the Ottoman-Hungarian Context,” in his Pal Fodor, In Quest of the Golden Apple: Imperial Ideology, Politics, and Military Administration in the Ottoman Empire (İstanbul: İsis Press, 2000), 71-104.

The Ottoman-Russian “Steppe” Frontier

--Michael Khodarkovsky, Introduction , Chapter 1 “The Sociology of the Frontier, or Why Peace was Impossible” and Chapter 5 “Concepts and Policies in the Imperial Borderlands, 1690s-1800,” in his Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 1-45 and 184-220. [savepdf]

--Virginia Martin.   “Barımta: Nomadic Custom, Imperial Crime,” in D. Brower and E. Lazzerini (eds.), Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 249-270. [savepdf]

--Robert Crews.  “Empire and the Confessional State: Islam and Religious Politics in 19th Century Russia,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 108, No. 1 (February 2003), 50-83. [savepdf]

--Moshe Gammer, “The Beginnings of the Naqshbandiyya in Daghestan and the Russian Conquest of the Caucasus,” in Die Welt des Islams, New Series, Vol. 34, Issue 3 (Nov. 1994), 204-217. [savepdf]

-- Muhammad Tahir al-Qarakhi.  “The Shining of Daghestani Swords in Certain Campaigns of Shamil (Selected Passages),” Translated and Annoted by Ernest Tucker and Thomas Sanders, in T. Sanders, E. Tucker, and G. Hamburg (eds.), Russian-Muslim Confrontation in the Caucasus: Alternative Visions of the Conflict Between Imam Shamil and the Russians, 1830-1859 (London: Routledge-Curzon Press, 2004), 9-66. [savepdf]

Further Reading:

--Michael Khodarkovsky, “Ignoble Savages and Unfaithful Subjects: Constructing Non-Christian Identities in Early Modern Russia,” in D. Brower and E. Lazzerini (eds.), Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 9-27. 

--Robert Crews.  For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia.  (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).

--Edward Lazzerini.  “Local Accommodation and Resistance to Colonialism in 19th Century Crimea,” in D. Brower and E. Lazzerini (eds.), Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 163-187.

Ottoman Borderlands in the Balkans and Middle East and the Transition from Empire to Nation State 

--Virginia Aksan.  “Whose Territory and Whose Peasants? Ottoman Boundaries on the Danube in the 1760s,” in F. Anscombe (ed.) The Ottoman Balkans, 1750-1830 (Princeton: Marcus Weiner, 2006), 61-86. [savepdf]

--Rossitsa Gradeva, “Osman Pazvantoglu of Vidin: Between Old and New,” in F. Anscombe (ed.) The Ottoman Balkans, 1750-1830 (Princeton: Marcus Weiner, 2006), 115-162. [savepdf]

--Bruce Masters.  Chapter 9 “Semi-Autonomous Forces in the Arab Provinces” and Chapter 13 “Christians in a Changing World,” in S. Faroqhi (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, Vol. 3: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 186-208 [savepdf] and 272-282. [savepdf]

--Avdo Sučeska.  “The Position of Bosnian Muslims in the Ottoman State,” in International Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1978), 1-24 [savepdf]

--V. Panaite. “The Re‘ayas of the Tributary-Protected Principalities (The 16th through 18th Centuries), in K. Karpat with R. Zens (Eds.), Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities, and Political Changes (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2003), 79-104. [savepdf]

--Isa Blumi.  “Thwarting the Ottoman Empire: Smuggling through the Empire’s New Frontiers in Yemen and Albania, 1878-1910,” in Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities, and Political Changes (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2003), 255-276. [savepdf]

--Kemal Kirişci.  “Migration and Turkey: the Dynamics of State, Society, and Politics,” in R. Kasaba (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, Vol. 4: Turkey in the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 175-198. [savepdf]

Further Readings:

--Traian Stoianovich.  “The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant,” in The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 20, No. 2 (June. 1960), 234-313. 

Further Reading:

--Maurus Reinkowski.  Double Struggle.  No income: Ottoman Borderlands in Northern Albania,” in Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities, and Political Changes (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2003), 239-255.

--Erik-Jan Zürcher.  “The Young-Turks – Children of the Borderlands?,” in Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities, and Political Changes (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2003), 275-287.

--Avdo Sučeska.  “The Position of the Raya in Bosnia in the 18th Century,” in Survey Sarajevo, Vol. III (1978), 208-225.

UNIT 5: Borderland Terminology: exchange, conflict, cultural mediation, syncretism, hybridity, “clash of civilizations,” etc.

Syncretism and Hybridity vs. Conflict and Exchange

--Droogers, A.  “Syncretism: the problem of definition, the definition of the problem.”  In Dialogue and Syncretism: An Interdisciplinary Approach, edited by J. Gort, H. Vroom, R. Fernhout and A. Wessels

--Charles Steward.   “Syncretism and Its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mixture,” in Diacritics 29.3 (1999), 40-62.[savepdf]

--Colpe, Carsten. "The Phenomenon of Syncretism and the Impact of Islam." In K. Kehl-Bodrogi, B. Kellner-Heinkele, and A. Otter-Beaujean (eds.)  Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Near East: Collected Papers of the International Symposium “Alevism in Turkey and Comparable Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Near East and in the Past and Present” (Leiden: Brill Press, 1997), 35-48. [savepdf]

-- Hayden, Robert.  “Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites in South Asia and the Balkans.”  Current Anthropology 43/2 (2002): 205-219. [savepdf]

--Richard Bulliet.  The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization,” in his The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 1-46.

Further Readings:

--Charles Steward and Rosalind Shaw, eds. “Introduction” to  Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism. London: Routledge, 1994.

Paper #3 Due in Class