Naqshbandi Sufis and their conception of place, time and fear on the Turkish-Syrian border and borderland

Abstract

The employment of diverse forms of security and control on territorial borders have led to production of numerous events of border crossings, smuggling, banditry and death along with stories of separation, loss, mourning, pain, and yearning in the everyday life of border people. The Naqshbandi Khaznavi order has an expansive interpersonal social network across the political borders of Turkish and Syrian nation-states. This work analyzes the ways in which Sufis dealt with diverse aspects of the Turkish-Syrian border by unbinding shackles and orders of political system that were fabricated constantly from the 1920s to the early 1980s. The life stories and narratives of the Sufis document the existence of a religious-cultural landscape, diversifying the perception of place, time and fear which have transcended political borders for decades, contradicting official cartographic imagination and the modern-secular understanding of place and time. Besides, in addition to analyses of religious orders as social, economic and political entities, this work aims to elucidate emotional aspects of relations and faith that coexist between Sufis and their Sheikh in the context of spatial distance, political border and fear of death.