Hybride lecture by Rıza Yıldırım | University of Vienna

Abstract

The Alevi tradition is often assumed to rely predominantly on Oral Transmission, lacking a substantial foundation in written sources. While not entirely unfounded, this assumption has been increasingly challenged by recent scholarship revealing that Alevi communities did, in fact, cultivate and preserve a significant written culture, primarily through various forms of manuscripts. This lecture examines a key genre of Alevi religious literature: the Buyruk (Ordinance), which constitutes the backbone of Alevi sacred texts. Although regarded as the principal religious guide-book of the Alevi faith, the Buyruk is not a fixed text. Rather, it is a dynamic and evolving corpus that differs across historical periods and geographical regions. Consequently, numerous versions of the Buyruk exist, each varying in content while sharing a core set of themes, concepts, and terminology. As a genre rather than a single-authored work, the Buyruk lacks an identified author, raising critical questions about the nature of religious authority embedded within the texts. Drawing on eleven manuscripts copied between the 17th and 18th centuries, this lecture proposes a methodology for analyzing the construction and function of religious authority in the Buyruk tradition.

POSTER (PDF)

Attendance in person at:

Campus of the University of Vienna
Department of Near Eastern Studies' Auditorium

Or online:

ZOOM

This is the second lecture in the webinar series for the academic year 2025-26, this year organised by the NoMansLand research project (FWF Y 1232) dedicated to the study of Islamic manuscripts in pre-modern Iran and Central Asia in collaboration with the Institut für Orientalistik (Universität Wien) as part of the Lecture series "Beyond the Codex: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Manuscript Cultures."

Visit our YouTube channel to watch recordings of past lectures:

https://www.youtube.com/@IFI_Media

For a list of upcoming lectures in the webinar series, please see Webinar series "Pre-modern Islamic manuscripts"