practices into rituals held in these buildings, and promoted Christianity as a transitional
phase to the true religious path. The dervish lodge served to “assimilate different forms
of religious expression and formed them into a new ideological system that allowed for
a plurality of shared beliefs and practices.” Wolper, Cities and Saints, 74–8 1 , 98.
- John Howe, “The Conversion of the Physical World: The Creation of a Chris-
tian Landscape,” in Muldoon, Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, 67.
- During this process, at fi rst the new beliefs or gods or practices could be in-
cluded and accepted by locals at their shrines, then over time they become identifi ed
with or merge with local ones, and fi nally, they displace or replace them. Eaton, The Rise
of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 269–90.
- Howe, “The Conversion of the Physical World,” 66, 69.
- Here I am speaking of external societal crises, not internal psychological prob-
lems. Spyros Vyronis Jr.’s study The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the
Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1971 ) is based on the premise that Muslim conquest led to crisis
among the Orthodox Christians of Anatolia, which facilitated their conversion to Islam.
For the relation of crisis at the societal level (social and political disintegration) to con-
version in general, see Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, 44–55.
Nock, Conversion, 99.
Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, “Christianity and Colonialism in South
Africa,” American Ethnologist 1 3 ( 1 986): 1 –22.
The converters may translate indigenous religious terms in contemptuous
ways, or decide not to translate terms from their own religion. See Sabine MacCormack,
Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton University Press, 1991 ); Vicente Rafael, Contracting Colonialism: Translation and
Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1 993); Devin DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden
Horde: Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1 994).
- DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde, 23–24.
- Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, 1 73; Peter Hardy, “Modern Euro-
pean and Muslim Explanations of Conversion to Islam in South Asia: A Preliminary
Survey of the Literature,” in Conversion to Islam, ed. Nehemia Levtzion (New York:
Holmes and Meier, 1 979), 98.
- Nehemia Levtzion, “Toward a Comparative Study of Islamization,” in Levtzion,
Conversion to Islam, 7.
- James Sandos, Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); William B. Taylor, “Two Shrines of the
Cristo Renovado: Religion and Peasant Politics in Late Colonial Mexico,” American His-
torical Review 11 0 (October 2005): 945–74. Apostasy is the fl ip side of conversion. One
fi nds a theoretical discussion of apostasy in the legal opinions of religious authorities,
and sometimes the mention of the execution of apostates in records of the imperial
council. Yet one is harder pressed to fi nd mention of apostasy in chronicles since it was
so diffi cult for writers to imagine Muslims willingly leaving Islam.
260 notes to pages 17–18