Dmitry R. Zhantiev

The represented article is devoted to the analysis of the activities and the ideological legacy of the Syrian Islamic scholar Yusuf bin Ismail al-Nabhani (1849–1932) who represented conservative trend in the Islamic thought of the Ottoman Empire. For sheikh al-Nabhani and his followers the modern age was neither associated with modernization nor with Islamic reforms. Al-Nabhani fundamentally rejected such approaches towards Islam, considering the system of Islamic Sciences complete and universal. In this, his views corresponded with the policy of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul-Hamid II. However, al-Nabhani can hardly be considered only as a guide to the governmental course.

Contrary to the opinion spread in some studies on the history of Islamic thought, a tendency to revive and reform Islamic practices with direct reliance on the sacred texts of the Koran and the Sunnah was common among some Muslim thinkers not only in Egypt but also in Ottoman Syria. And the mentioned tendency practically met no resistance provided that the principle of sacred Sultan’s reign was not challenged by this or that Muslim scholar. The represented article is devoted to the analysis of the activities of some Salafi-minded Islamic scholars (ulama) in Damascus during the reign of Abdul Hamid II. A special attention is paid to the personality of sheikh Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi.

A report on international academic discussions of the medieval and early modern Middle East.

The article examines the features of the religious and intellectual activities of a group of reform-minded Muslim scholars (ulama) led by Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi (1866–1914) in Ottoman Syria at the end of the 19th century, as well as the reaction to their activities by conservative supporters of Islamic traditionalism (taqlid) and the Ottoman authorities. The key historical event in the focus of the study is the so-called The “Mujtahids Incident” of 1896, when al-Qasimi and a number of his supporters were summoned to a judicial instance in Damascus for a public trial of their religious views and academic studies, where they were forced to respond to accusations, made against them by the Hanafi Mufti, of disloyalty to the authorities and independent arbitrary interpretations of the Koran and Sunnah. The study and discussion of sacred texts in the circle of Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi became an occasion for attacks from conservative-minded ulama, who were afraid of competition from Islamic intellectuals who did not consider themselves obliged to unconditionally accept all the conclusions of one or another of the four madhhabs (religious and legal schools). And although the participants in the “Mujtahids Incident” managed to justify themselves to the authorities in 1896, in the future until the Young Turk revolution of 1908–1909 they could not openly declare that they were practicing ijtihad, i.e. independent formulation and clarification of Islamic religious and legal conclusions based on direct reference to the Koran and the Sunnah. Both the formal and informal influence of conservative ulama in Ottoman Syria during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876–1909) remained virtually undeniable.

The article examines the conflictual relations between the Druze community, historically inhabiting Jabal al-Duruz, a mountainous region in southern Syria, and the Ottoman authorities during the period of large-scale reforms in the Ottoman Empire, that is, during the Tanzimat (1839–1876) and the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876–1909). The ethno-confessional specificity of the population of Jabal al-Duruz, which has persisted to the present day, largely shaped the sociopolitical situation in the Hauran region, of which Jabal al-Duruz formed a part, south of Damascus. This makes it possible to place the military conflicts and political arrangements between the Ottoman provincial administration in Syria and the Druze community of Hauran within a broader context of the changing historical destinies of inward-looking and compactly settled ethno-confessional communities during state-led modernization. Drawing on archival materials from Russian consular reports and other primary sources, the study traces the logic and dynamics of Ottoman attempts to incorporate Jabal al-Duruz into the empire-wide reformed system of administrative and territorial governance. It also identifies the factors that helped preserve the Druze community’s confessional and social insularity and its readiness to offer armed resistance to external encroachments on traditional self-government.