Religious Reform in the Late Ottoman Empire: Institutional Change and the Professionalization of the Ulema

Erhan Bektaş, London, I.B.Tauris, 2023, x, 216 pp., $103,50 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-7556-4547-3.

Erhan Bektaş’s Religious Reform in the Late Ottoman Empire: Institutional Change and the Professionalization of the Ulema, the product of many years of research, is a seminal work in the history of Ottoman ilmiye thought. Exposing a variety of perspectives and layers in the conceptual and institutional evolution of the role of Ottoman ulema throughout the late nineteenth century, Religious Reform in the Late Ottoman Empire offers a rich and insightful framework for the role of Ottoman ulema in a period of transition from the traditional to the modern era in the Tanzimat period. The book focuses on the intellectual, educational, professional, cultural, and ideological capacities of the late Ottoman ilmiye members. To do this, the author creatively and uniquely examines and engages in many different archival documents from the Ottoman and Meşihat Archives.