Translating Indian Muslim Thinkers: Ömer Rıza Doğrul and the forging of a post-pan-islamist republican Islam

Ömer Rıza was one of the most prolific authors of books on Islamic religion in the new Turkish Republic during the single party period (1923-1945). Crowned by his translation-cum-commentary of the Quran published in 1934, Ömer Rıza’s publications were often inspired by his exhaustive reading of Indian Muslim authors, be they translations or adaptations of them. This is largely the result of circulation between the Ottoman and British empires at the beginning of the 20th century – partly resulting from pan-Islamist endeavours – that shaped Ömer Rıza’s own particular profile and personal networks and affected, in his youth, his worldview and Islamic knowledge.

Nathalie Clayer is professor at the EHESS and a senior research fellow at the CNRS (Paris). Her main research interests are religion, nationalism and state-building process in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman space. Her publications include Aux origines du nationalisme albanais. La naissance d’une nation majoritairement musulmane en Europe (Karthala, 2007), Conflicting Loyalties in the Balkans co-edited with Hannes Grandits and Robert Pichler (Tauris, 2011) and, with Xavier Bougarel, Europe’s Balkan Muslims. A New History (Hurst, 2017).