Public Lecture by Armando Salvatore

Our Senior Research Fellow Armando Salvatore will present a guest lecture on "Religious Charisma, Civility and Sovereignty in the Sociology of Islam" on 21 November 2016, 06:15 – 07:45 p.m., at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe", a research project of the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. The lecture will take place at the CERES Palais, room "Ruhrpott" (4.13). 

The lecture will delineate some key trajectories in the history of the Islamic ecumene through which saintly charisma was appropriated by various rulers for the sake of political legitimacy. The presentation will also focus on the shifting role of religious knowledge production in the process. The analysis will show the emergence of original forms of precolonial political modernity that can be contrasted with the European Leviathan-model of sacral sanctioning of sovereignty. Examples are mainly drawn from the evolution of Ottoman rule and court culture inthe larger context of early modern Islamicate empires and their changing religio-political cultures.