Freedom in an Islamic context: intellectual conceptions and emotional expressions in the late Ottoman Empire

INVITATION to LECTURES  & PANEL

Freedom in an Islamic context: intellectual conceptions and emotional expressions in the late Ottoman Empire 

SPEAKERS:

Prof. Florian Zemmin (Freie Universität Berlin)

Asst. Prof. Alp Eren Topal (Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul)

Asst. Prof. Şeyma Afacan (Kırklareli University)

Monday, 22 September 2025, 19:00 Orient-Institut Istanbul

This panel will discuss the concept of freedom in 19th century Muslim experiences and debates with particular attention to body and emotions. Although there has been much debate on Islam and politics, particularly in the wake of 9/11, the concept of freedom in Islamic tradition has remained a curiously neglected topic.  In extant scholarship, freedom (Ar. ḥurriya, Tr. hürriyet) is discussed almost exclusively as a translation of liberté in the nexus of global liberal politics and circulation of ideas. We will argue that paying attention to the emotive and embodied content of ḥurriya/hürriyet reveals an alternative account which tells much about the nature of political struggles, oppression and biopolitics in late Ottoman society.

Florian Zemmin will sketch older and more recent approaches to the concept of freedom in Islamic contexts, and especially in Arabic. He will critically recall equations of freedom with Western philosophical traditions and set the stage for the more recent and innovative approaches presented in this roundtable. Alp Eren Topal will demonstrate how ḥurriya/hürriyet was as much a subjective and emotional concept as it was about selective liberal political arrangements. He will draw parallels between Isaiah Berlin’s category of “positive concept of freedom” and the Sufi notions of ḥurriya/hürriyet demonstrating continuities as well as transformations in Muslim subjectivity into the nineteenth century. Şeyma Afacan will touch upon various scientific conceptualizations of the body, soul, and emotions within the framework of modern psychology, against the backdrop of rising interest in political and economic liberalism in the late Ottoman Empire. She will question to what degree secular and progressive views of the soul, fed largely by biological materialism, Darwinism and social Darwinism, deepened various interpretations of freedom at the time and their limitations.

Florian Zemmin since 2021 is Professor of Islamic Studies (Islamwissenschaft) at Freie Universität Berlin and since 2022 also Director of the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies. Previously he was Senior Researcher at the Humanities Center for Advanced Study “Multiple Secularities: Beyond the West, beyond modernities” at the University of Leipzig. His main field of research is religion and society in the modern and contemporary Arab and Islamic world. In that field, more specific topics include Islamic reformism, theories of secularity and Arabic sociologies of religion. Next to sociology of religion and sociology of knowledge, he mainly works with approaches of conceptual history.

Alp Eren Topal is an assistant professor of history at Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul. Formerly, he was a Marie Curie fellow at Oslo University (2019-2022) and researcher at Freie University, Berlin (2023-2024). Topal’s work focuses on the history of political thought in the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic world with a focus on conceptual history. Topal has published extensively on various key concepts in the early modern and nineteenth century Ottoman discourse, dealing with questions of modernization, secularization, and temporality.

Şeyma Afacan is an assistant professor at Kırklareli University. In 2017 she obtained her PhD in the history of medicine at Oxford University, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute, Center for the History of Emotions, in 2017-2018. Currently, she is working on her monograph on late Ottoman discussions about popular psychology, science, and emotions. She is interested in the history of emotions, psychology, science, medicine, and ideas.

The language of the event is English. Participation is free of charge. To join this invitation please register through the link below.  Photos or videos will be taken during the event. By participating, you agree that these may be used on the OII website, newsletter and social media. The event will not be recorded.

To join ONLINE please use this Zoom Link. No registration necessary:

https://maxweberstiftung.zoom-x.de/j/61137499275?pwd=7WMD0jfysb0zIChIRDTmDTI34Mjlag.1
Meeting ID: 611 3749 9275
Passcode: 627572

VENUE

Orient-Institut Istanbul
Galip Dede Cad. 65, Şahkulu Mah., TR – 34421 Istanbul
Tel: +90 212 293 60 67 oiist@oiist.org www.oiist.org

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