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Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the legacy of the Ottoman scholar Abu Bakr Effendi and how it becomes a site of contestation and competition in today's South Africa. Studying the heritage practises of Turkish state and non-state actors, it shows how Ottoman memory becomes leverage in Turkey-Africa relations.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation focuses on the constructions and contestations of the Islamic religious authority of Abu Bakr Effendi (1814-1880) in South Africa. Abu Bakr Effendi arrived in Cape Town in 1962 as the emissary of the Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz to teach Islamic law and resolve the religious conflicts within the Muslim community (van Bruinessen 2000). The nineteenth century Muslim community of Cape Town mainly composed of the political exiles and slaves brought from the East Indies by the Dutch colonial authorities. Abu Bakr Effendi established Muslim schools and wrote the first Afrikaans Ajami book on the religious obligations of Islam. As an Ottoman scholar, he followed the Hanafi school of law whereas the ‘Malay community’ was predominantly Shafi’i. The legacy of Abu Bakr Effendi’s religious authority is a site of contestation and competition in today’s South Africa. On the one hand, Turkish governmental bodies and heritage entrepreneurs have recently put tremendous amount of effort in ‘preserving’ his memory by renovating his tomb, including him in the museums of Islamic heritage in Cape Town, and most remarkably, by granting citizenship to his descendants. On the other hand, South African Muslims remain more skeptical about his contributions to Islam in South Africa and the contemporary Turkish efforts of cultural preservation. This presentation addresses questions of memory, heritage, and authority in the transnational context of post-apartheid South Africa and post-Ottoman Turkey. In doing so, it contributes to our understanding of how Ottoman history, memory and heritage become leverage in contemporary Turkey-Africa relations.