1. The term "hodja" (hoca) would have commonly designated a religious teacher during the Ottoman period. The term is now used to refer to any kind of teacher, whether religious or secular. On the other hand, the phrase "hodja from Of" would always be understood to refer to a country religious teacher. [BACK]

2. Elsewhere (Meeker 1994a), I have given another account of Islamic sociability in Of. [BACK]

3. The peoples of the eastern Black Sea coast are thought to conform to a certain physical type, with tall stature, light complexion, narrow head, and large nose. While I fit this type, many Oflus do not. [BACK]

4. These are classical anthropological concepts. See, for example, Evans-Pritchard (1940, 1949) and Evans-Pritchard and Fortes (1940). [BACK]

5. During the early years of the Turkish Republic, the National Assembly, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), had adopted various laws that encouraged or required new forms of "secular" (lâik) dress and behavior, usually of western European origin. [BACK]

6. The word "bid’ءat" is usually translated as "innovation" or "heresy." It is a technical term in the Islamic sciences that some believers use to condemn behavior they consider un-Islamic. [BACK]

7. This would have been very unlikely. During the first decades of the Turkish Republic, there was very little dialogue between Kemalist and Islamist partisans. See Esposito (1991) for an account of the Islamic modernists. [BACK]

8. By comparison, the circles of interpersonal association among ordinary Oflus were both more flexible and more evanescent. Economic opportunities that required group cooperation and organization stimulated a potential for sociability derived from Islamic belief and practice and so spawned a little circle of interpersonal association that did not exist before the fact. Correspondingly, as economic conditions changed during the early 1970s, their little circle began to change in its membership and activities. Two brothers who were key members of the group became more and more involved in long-distance trucking. This was a demanding occupation that entailed extended absences from the town. Eventually the two brothers no longer worked together with their old associates, but made new friendships and partnerships among Oflus residing outside the district. [BACK]

9. The fusion of Republican and Islamic principles was a common feature of public life in the district of Of in the 1960s. The holders of the most important public offices, including the district officer (kaymakam) and the executive director (müdür) of the tea factory, neither of whom were Oflu, "officially" recognized major religious holidays in various ways. For example, during the holidays concluding the month of Ramadan, the district officer personally greeted the crowds who issued from early morning prayers in the mosque, and the executive director received visitors in his office in the tea factory. [BACK]

10. The "Kemalo-Islamism" of the Selimoğlu in Of was matched by the "Libero-Islamism" of the Muradoğlu in Eskipazar. [BACK]

11. Cf. Lewis 1961, 280. [BACK]

12. During the 1960s, the government was opening religious schools at the middle and high school levels. These were designated "prayer-leader and sermon-giver school" (imam hatip okulu). Since there was no such school in the district of Of at the time, the hodjas were clearly the result of illegal religious teaching and learning. [BACK]

13. Many believers were reluctant to accept brimmed headgear, since the forehead must touch the ground during prayer, or tight–fitting outer clothing, since it is identified with secular life. [BACK]

14. In this respect, the hodjas were not alone. By the time of my first visit to Of in 1965, the government had eased currency and passport controls that severely restricted the ability of Turkish citizens to perform the pilgrimage. After the easing, the pilgrimage had become highly organized as a commercial business. A convoy of buses departed from the district each year on the same day. [BACK]

15. The religious academy in the village of Paçan [Maraşlıı], not far from Kadahor [Çaykara], may have been one of the first. See chap. 5. [BACK]

16. See chap. 5 for a fuller discussion of the historical documentation of the tradition of religious study in the old district of Of. [BACK]

17. It is probable that the first religious academies in Of were founded in the upper western valley-system, but it is not altogether certain that the first professors and students in these early religious academies were Greek-speakers. See chap. 5. [BACK]

18. Umur (1949, 22–40) lists the religious academies in the eastern valley-system, citing them by name and by village. [BACK]

19. So the hodja from Of is not necessarily from Of at all but is rather an individual who pursued his studies there for some period of time. [BACK]

20. The staff of an official mosque—for example, the prayer-leader (imam) and the caller-to-prayer (müezzin)—required official approval in both the Ottoman and Republican periods. [BACK]

21. Strasser 1995. See also Hann and Beller-Hann (2001) for an account of such a hodja from Of in the eastern district of Pazar. Even though some of the hodjas indulged in shady practices at least some of the time, this should not obscure their other, more prosaic function as modest religious experts in the sacred law of Islam. [BACK]

22. Although there were some hodjas from large family groupings (as was the school secretary), the individuals who worked as itinerant prayer-leaders and sermon-givers were rarely the descendants of aghas or the members of their family lines. I was sometimes told that individuals had pursued the profession of imaming for lack of economic opportunities in the district of Of and as a means to escape domination by or collaboration with the aghas. [BACK]

23. For the later nineteenth century, see the citations of the Trabzon yearbooks (salname) for 1869/1286 and 1888/1305 in chap. 8 (notes). [BACK]

25. Umur 1949, 25-28. [BACK]

26. He lists the subjects taught as grammar (sarf), syntax (nahiv), logic (mantıık), semantics (maânî), rhetoric (beyan), jurisprudence (fııkııh), applied jurisprudence (usulü fııkııh), study of the Koran (kelâm), commentary on the Koran (tefsir), and study of the Tradition (hadîs). This list appears to include the full range of subjects that would have been offered in a religious academy of the Ottoman Empire. [BACK]

27. After his first return to the district of Of, sometime around 1910, Umur is reported to have offered such supplementary courses. According to Albayrak (1986, 68–70), this was the first time such basic subjects had been taught in the district of Of during the late Ottoman period. Umur is also said to have given instruction in Persian and Arabic. [BACK]

28. Examinations, once a part of the system of religious education, had been abolished by official decree sometime during the later Ottoman period. [BACK]

29. Umur (1949, 25–28) formulated a program of reform for religious education in Of and submitted it as a proposal to the müftü. He recommended that a new kind of academy be set up in Çufaruksa (Uğurlu) village. This new kind of academy would be financed by public contributions (an idea that suggests Umur's views were shared by other Oflus). Its professors would use different teaching methods and offer a different course of study. There would still be religious courses and instruction as before, but they would be supplemented by secular courses and instruction. The müftü was never able to implement his proposal because of the crises that were to accompany more than a decade of warfare. [BACK]

30. He writes that he will leave unmentioned irregularities that were characteristic of the religious academies in Of (ibid., 27). I would guess he is referring to the offering of authorizing certificates for a flat fee. The status of certified religious teacher would have sometimes been useful for escaping conscription during the later nineteenth century. Umur also writes that a good system of religious education is necessary in order to protect the people from charlatans (ibid., 30–31). I would guess he has in mind the hodjas who worked spells and cures. See chap. 8 for further discussion of the significance of this practice. [BACK]

31. Ibid., 36-37. [BACK]

32. See chap. 8 for a review of the number of Oflus in the imperial religious establishment in the later Empire. [BACK]

33. The Ottoman Civil Code (mecelle), compiled between 1869 and 1876, was based on the sacred law of Islam but took the form of a modernized legal code (Lewis 1961, 120-21). [BACK]

34. Ibid., 259–60, 266–69. The nationalists did not ignore official Islam. A new Ministry of Religious Affairs and Ministry of Pious Endowments took the place of the old imperial institutions. See Zürcher (1993, 195). [BACK]

35. Ibid. [BACK]

36. The nationalists discussed reform of the existing religious schools (medreses) during the Independence War (1921–22). Later, in 1924, they abolished these schools but opened new ıımam-Hatip schools "to train enlightened [aydıın] imams," and reopened the faculty of theology, which had been closed in 1919 (Akşit 1991, 161). Then new, more restrictive policies were adopted. An ıımam-Hatip school that had been opened in the town of Of in 1925 was closed down in 1928 (Tursun 1998, 45). By 1929, instruction in Arabic and Persian was abolished in secondary education, and the last two ıımam-Hatip schools in the country were closed in 1931 (Lewis 1961, 409). [BACK]

37. In 1928, the National Assembly adopted a new Latin alphabet for printed Turkish and prohibited the public use of the old Arabic alphabet. See Lewis (1961, 271–74) and Zürcher (1993, 196-97). [BACK]

38. When I interviewed the müftü of Of in 1988, he told me that the authorizing certificate would not list a chain of authorities but only the name of the student's teacher and the name of a teacher's teacher, usually a sheikh (şeyh) of a Nakşibendi religious brotherhood (tarikat). It is possible that this comment reflects a change in the character of the authorizing certificate over the intervening period. See chap. 8 (notes) for further comment on religious brotherhoods in the district of Of. [BACK]

39. The passage fuses together the results of two interviews with the same individual, one in the fall of 1966 and another in the fall of 1967. [BACK]

40. When I interviewed the müftü of Of in 1988, he told me he was the last graduate of one of the last academies during the early 1940s. By his account, I have concluded that his early religious education in Of at that time was but a fragment of the old system of religious education as described by Hasan Umur. [BACK]

41. The citations, which are edited versions of my field notes, were recorded in 1967. [BACK]

42. In 1988 I met a young man from Çaykara who told me that he had himself engaged in religious studies in his village and had gone out on the cer when he was in his early twenties (circa 1970), as had all the young people from his village. During the month of Ramadan, they had traveled to Çukurova, near the city of Adana, where they were received as guests by villagers and given food and lodging. However, his generation may have been one of the last to engage in this kind of activity, at least in any significant numbers. [BACK]

43. There appears to have been at least one other country area where residents had accomplished such a massive penetration and colonization of the imperial religious establishment: the districts of Akseki and Ibradıı, which are adjacent to one another in the province of Antalya. But see chap. 8 for an analysis of the differences between Of and these two districts in the Toros Mountains of southern Asia Minor. [BACK]

44. See the counts of learned class officials for Batum, Arhavi, and Rize in chap. 8, table 3. [BACK]

45. This was more the case toward the east than toward the west. See chaps. 3, 4, and 5 for a more precise accounting of the place of official Islam in the coastal districts. [BACK]

46. Various peoples and groups affiliated with other kinds of Islam had from time to time arrived and settled in the eastern coastal districts. Eventually, however, these peoples and groups tended to re-orient themselves toward official Islamic belief and practice. See chaps. 3, 4, and 5. [BACK]

47. See chaps. 4, 5, and 6 for further discussion of the historical connections between soldiers and students. [BACK]

48. I have never heard of such ceremonies elsewhere in Anatolia, but it would be surprising if they did not have their counterparts. See chap. 8 for a discussion of the professors and academies of Akseki and Ibradıı. [BACK]

49. Umur 1949, 32. [BACK]

50. The fairs (panayıır) held each year during the late summer would have been attended by a larger number of people, but these were informal gatherings rather than ceremonial occasions. [BACK]

51. I was not able to witness an authorizing certificate celebration, but I have spoken with a number of individuals who did attend someof them. [BACK]

52. I have taken the citations that follow from my notes, breaking the text at certain points for the sake of analysis. Before analyzing their content, I edited them for grammar and redundancy. They have not been rewritten to support my commentary. [BACK]

53. I have not been able to refer to descriptions of any official graduation ceremonies, which would have been held by the teaching staff of the imperial religious academies in Istanbul, so I cannot comment on the extent to which these local celebrations imitated them. One has to consider the possibility that the authorizing certificate ceremony had come under the influence of secular graduation exercises by the 1950s or 1960s. [BACK]

54. This indicates that the graduates were usually adolescents during the later years of the Turkish Republic. This was confirmed by the reports I received from other individuals who were religious teachers and students. [BACK]

55. The word "düğün" can be applied to any of the festivities that are part of the marriage, such as the fetching of the bride, the hosting of the bride-takers, or the reception of the bride. [BACK]

56. Cf. Umur (1949, 32) for the Ottoman period. [BACK]

57. See Meeker (1997), in which I describe the same kind of performance, silence and stillness, as a recognition and acceptance of state authority, versions of which appear in both the Empire and the Republic. [BACK]

58. Umur describes these exhortations as follows: "The best known of the learned class give advice and counsel [to those in attendance]. They condemn such immoral practices as dishonesty, rape, carousing, and gambling, and so they encourage the fostering of brotherhood among the Muslims and they give especially effective advice and counsel" (Umur 1949, 32). [BACK]

59. My friend may be "forgetting" that public prayers were sometimes still spoken in Pontic Greek in some of the villages of Çaykara. See chap. 5, note 38, for further comment on Pontic Greek in the district of Of. [BACK]

60. My friend was well known for his ability to provide entertaining accounts of individual characters, reflecting their speech and behavior. The translation suffers from the absence of his mimicking of accents, facial expressions, and gestures. [BACK]

61. The text is based on an interview that took place during the fall of 1967. [BACK]

62. I met this man in Sürmene in 1988. He was nearly ninety years old and had been retired for many years. [BACK]

63. We have already encountered two, Hasan Umur and the school secretary. Another interesting example is Mustafa Cansıız, reported to have been well read in both the Islamic sciences and Western philosophy. He is also said to have joined the Turkish Workers Party (Türk Işci Partisi) during the 1970s. [BACK]

64. Most secular schoolteachers would have been ardent Kemalists during the 1930s. [BACK]

65. The uprising occurred at a town near Izmir on December 23, 1930. More than a score of men were hanged in the aftermath. The schoolteacher may have incorrectly remembered the date of the incident in Kadahor, or, more probably, the events at Menemem may have still been fresh in his mind five years later when he accompanied the gendarmerie to the village. [BACK]

66. The citations, which are edited versions of my field notes, were recorded in 1988. [BACK]

67. A new faculty of theology was opened in Ankara in 1949, and the first new ıımam-Hatip schools began to be opened in 1951. By the 1980s there were nine faculties of theology and 376 middle-level and 341 lycée level ıımam-Hatip schools enrolling about a quarter-million students. See Akşit 1991, 147. By the 1980s, a school for prayer-leaders and sermon-givers had been opened in the town of Of. By the early 1990s, hundreds of students were enrolled in two ıımam-Hatip schools in the district. [BACK]