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Westward Ho! with Matthew Melvin-Koushki
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‘Our physicists are so Islamicate these days! And by “Islamicate”, I mean cool and weird.’
Interview Bio:
Matthew Melvin-Koushki is Associate Professor of Islamic History at the University of South Carolina. He specialises in early modern Islamicate intellectual and imperial history, with a focus on the theory and practice of the occult sciences in Timurid-Safavid Iran and the wider Persianate world to the nineteenth century. His many publications can be browsed here.
Works Cited in this Episode:
Our interview with Jason Josephson-Storm on the myth of disenchantment can be found here.
Richard W. Bulliet. The Sufi Fiddle: A Novel. St Martin’s Press, 1991.
Philip K. Dick. The Man in the High Castle. Putnam, 1962.
Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm. The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2017.
Matthew Melvin-Koushki. Dr Dee’s Ottoman Adventure. Hellebore, pages 71-9, Samhain 2021.
Recommended Reading:
The following, all by Prof Melvin-Koushki, may get the wheels spinning further:
- “Definition as (De)colonial Weapon: Western Esotericism Meets Islamic Occultism and Is Weirded Out,” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 24 (2024): 231-35.
- “Translating Esotericism: Early Modern Persian,” in Translating Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Mriganka Mukhopadhyay, special issue of Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism 11, no. 1 (2023 [2024]): 103-12.
- “An Islamic Scientific Revolution? Early Modern Occult Science, Cosmic Philology and the Weird,” special roundtable issue, ed. Justin Stearns and Nahyan Fancy, History of Science 61, no. 2 (2023): 166-72.
- “World as (Arabic) Text: Mīr Dāmād and the Neopythagoreanization of Philosophy in Safavid Iran,” Studia Islamica 114, no. 3 (2019): 378-43.
Thomas Kiefer
January 28, 2025
Absolutely gripping discussion–thank you. Your and Dr. Melvin-Koushki’s way of describing certian political “things” in “magical” terminology was really novel to me, and is very potent.
I completely get your counterfactual Ottoman history, although I wonder if the logic of capitalism would have ultimately undone it. Would it have adapted to capitalism like Japan, or would it have become a medieval/hyper-capitalist petro-state like Saudi or the UAE, or maybe some other way like how you describe? Certainly one would hope the 20th century history of the region would have been less violent and corrupt.
I might counter with another counterfactual: if the German SPD had voted against going to war with Russia then France (like they should have according to their internationalist principles) in 1914, then WWI would not have happened, or WWI would’ve centered around a German civil war. 20th Century history (incl. Ottoman) would have been almost incomprehensibly different.
Earl Fontainelle
January 29, 2025
Ah, the joys of irresponsible speculation!
I think the main difference in the Ottoman 21st century would just be one of balance. If we forget about all the specifics for a minute and just speculate on how the world would look different if the largest oil reserves on the planet had been in the hands of a powerful, self-confident empire with a strong geopolitical position instead of a number of artificially-crafted mini-states, which can be toppled with ease whenever necessary, the world-picture is much less unipolar (or dipolar, or whatever). There are more poles to take into account, that’s what I’m saying.
This would be considered a bad thing by some folks, but a good thing by others.
Thomas Kiefer
January 29, 2025
Thank you for the clarification, and I understand your point clearly now. Yes, you are definitely onto something here with this counterfactual. Not only would the world-picture been more multipolar in a geo-political (and thanks to the oil, economic) sense, it would have been more multipolar in a cultural sense. So much suffering, and cultural homogenization, could have been avoided.
By the way, Melvin-Koushki’s comment about our “New Mongol Age” is very apt.
All-in-all a very spellbinding discussion (that term is being used advisedly).
Thomas Kiefer
February 1, 2025
One additional comment, for the zeitgeist/culturesphere: the geological epoch name for Prof. Melvin-Koushki’s “New Mongol Age” could be “the Chthulhucene” (1914?-). (Idea from the band Foudre! Voltae (Chthulucene), Nahal Recordings, 2024.)
Sasha Chaitow
February 27, 2025
Some remarks on various points, if I may:
The model of linguistic learning suggested at the beginning is the way Classics are approached in modern Greek universities. There is considerable study of Arabic, Turkish and Ottoman Turkish, Persian, with Hebrew and Latin as secondaries, and a number of transcultural studies; this is not an especially new phenomenon; it is decades-old, but perhaps less known to Western academe. Middle-Eastern, Balkan, and Islamic studies have long each had their own place within Humanities & Religion depts. in Greece with full acknowledgement of transcultural exchange and entanglement.
With regard to the presence of linguistic scholarly centres: the continuation of Greek scholarship within Byzantium (or whatever we call it) really does deserve better understanding and attention. What about Byzantine literature drawing on and evolving from classical learning? If this is outside the frame, why? Or might it be worth re-examining the Greek material some disciplines choose to valorise? Worth revisiting Kaldellis here (Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians; also S. Papaioannou, The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature…) I know it’s not the focus here; this is in response to a remark from Matt early in the discussion. Critically, these studies have always acknowledged the transcultural exchange with Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman scholarship, literature, and oral traditions.
On the destruction of manuscripts: what about the 4th crusade and the destruction of Greek monastic archives by Ottoman occupiers? This is not being said in a political sense but as a matter of fact. There are extant records of manuscript assets before the 18th century when renewed raids on monasteries led to their loss. And there are hundreds of unstudied manuscripts remaining within monasteries too.
Earl – with the greatest respect, the term “mutual genocidal population transfer” is contestable particularly if examined in terms of hegemonies and numbers: there is good objective documentation on this. I know this was a speculative line of inquiry but…
Disenchantment did not occur in the Greek sphere either. This is well attested in various anthropological/ethnographic studies (see Charles Stewart and Renée Hirschon for two good examples; more in Margaret Alexiou). I note this not to shift the focus from the Islamicate contribution but only to note that the Byzantine and early modern Greek (Grecophone if you prefer) contribution is still firmly in the wastebasket.
The final points on linguistic nuance are extremely valuable; a round-table on this at some point could be very constructive. It would be amazing to recreate a true sense of transcultural exchange that drills into the history as well as the present.
Earl Fontainelle
March 4, 2025
Sasha,
Thanks for holding down the Roman side on this one. I couldn’t agree more on the centrality of East Roman contributions to the story of western esotericism. Obviously, here we are concentrating on the Islamicate side of things, but Matt’s (and colleagues’) new project is going to emphasise precisely the role of East Rome and Islamicate esotericisms in mutual dialogue. it will be amazing.
You ask: ‘What about Byzantine literature drawing on and evolving from classical learning? If this is outside the frame, why?’ It is certainly not outside the frame of this podcast, as witness our interview (here) with the very Anthony Kaldellis whom you mention, which sets the stage for things to come.
As for “mutual genocidal population transfer”, this was overblown; I should have said “mutual forced population transfers” (but it’s worth mentioning that such transfers are, under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Article 7, 1.d, classed as crimes against humanity. Not genocide, but horrible).
Karol Mrozicki
March 13, 2025
Soooo much food for thought, I’m going to become even more overweight lol