146 Islam and Modernity
festivities and rituals, are also commonly regarded as ‘popular’ practices, but
numerous learned, urban ulama have taken part in and endorsed at least some
of these practices. In the Ottoman Empire, certain rites of state were celebrated
at the shrine of the saint Eyüp Sultan in Istanbul, which was the centre of a state
cult as well as of ‘popular’ religiosity (Bruinessen 2005).
In fact, different people visiting a saint’s shrine may do quite different things
there, and the beliefs they hold in connection with the visitation and meanings
they associate with the rituals may vary even more widely. Even reformists may
visit graves out of respect for the deceased or in order to be reminded of the
afterlife, though they would fi ercely deny the possibility of intercession by the
dead. Especially in rural communities, shrine visitations often constitute the most
important religious ritual. Some modernising regimes have attempted to curtail
them. All shrines were closed in the Soviet Union and in Kemalist Turkey from
1925 to 1950. When changes of political regime resulted in a lifting of the ban
and reopening of major shrines, however, the visitations at once resumed. At
some ‘popular’ shrines, the offi cial religious authorities put up notices outlining
what is proper and improper behaviour, demarcating the ‘low’ from the ‘high’
visitation practices: visitors are enjoined to salute the deceased and to recite
verses of the Quran for the benefi t of his soul, but all forms of divination, vows
and requests for intercession – for instance, in the form of pieces of cloth tied to
the gate, a window or a nearby tree – are banned.^25
Sufi orders are not the only social formations associated with various forms of
‘popular’ devotion. In many parts of the Muslim world we fi nd heterodox com-
munities that practise rituals and hold beliefs that clearly separate them from
mainstream Islam. The Alevis of Turkey, the Druze, the Ismailis of Syria and
the Indian subcontinent, the Yezidis and Ahl-i Haqq of Kurdistan, the abangan
of Java and numerous similar communities belong to the religious periphery of
Islam. Their beliefs and rituals are to some extent shaped by Islam and reminis-
cent of those of Sufi s, but they retain numerous elements of other origins, and
they have kept themselves at some distance from the ulama as well as from the
state (Geertz 1960; Kehl-Bodrogi et al. (eds) 1997).
Transformations of Alevism in Turkey
The name Alevi is a blanket term for heterodox or syncretistic communities
of various origins living in Asia Minor and parts of south-eastern Europe that
share a veneration of Ali, besides a number of other features. The major rituals
as well as many of the beliefs held by these communities are very different from
those of orthodox Islam. The core ritual is the cem, a meeting in which all adult
members of the village community participate, husbands and wives together,
and in which sacred poems are sung and some special food and drink are conse-
crated and ritually shared. It is an almost ideal Durkheimian ritual of solidarity-
making, celebrating the community. One particular type of cem, the görgü cem,