ISIM NEWSLETTER 4 / 9 9 ISIM 3

Institutional news APPOINTMENT ISIM Chair at

Martin van Bruinessen initially studied theoretical physics and mathematics, only later turning to an- thropology and Islamic studies. When still a student in physics, he took a number of long trips to the Mid- Utrecht University dle East that aroused his lasting interest in the re- gion. He then followed courses in anthropology and started learning Turkish and Persian. After a few years as a mathematics teacher, he received a re- search grant for fieldwork among the , which Professor Martin allowed him to spend two years in the Kurdish-inhab- ited parts of , Iraq, Iran and Syria. He received his PhD from Utrecht University in 1978, with a thesis on the social and political organization of Kurdistan. One of the major themes in this thesis concerns the van Bruinessen social and political roles of Sufi orders (especially Naqshbandiyya and Qadiriyya) among the Kurds. Van Bruinessen has frequently revisited Kur- ung (West Java) for almost a year. Not surpris- among other things, a book on the ‘tradition- This work was established as one of the key texts on distan, and has published numerous articles ingly, perhaps, he found little radicalism but a alist’ Nahdlatul Ulama, which is probably the Kurdish society, and it was translated into various on Kurdish society and history, with a strong lot of magic and mysticism and discovered largest organization in the entire Muslim languages, including Turkish, Kurdish and Persian.* emphasis on the place of religion. In order to that ‘traditionalist’ Islam remains very vital in world. Van Bruinessen spent altogether al- give his work more historical depth, he took a modern urban setting. most nine years in and has pub- up Ottoman studies and worked on a number Van Bruinessen’s next Indonesian experi- lished numerous articles in English and four of Ottoman sources about Kurdish society. ence was to be when Indonesia’s Institute of books in Indonesian on various aspects of Is- Some of this work was published as an edition Sciences (LIPI) invited him as a consultant for lam in Indonesia. and analysis of one of the major 17th-century field research methods (1986-90). He took Since 1994, Van Bruinessen has taught sources on Kurdish society, Evliya Çelebi’s fa- part, inter alia, in a large research project on Turkish and Kurdish studies in the Depart- mous travelogue (Evliya Çelebi in Diyarbekir, the worldview of Indonesia’s ulama, carried ment Oriental Languages and Cultures at Brill, Leiden, 1988). out by Indonesian researchers. This position Utrecht University, with a one-year interrup- Meanwhile, Van Bruinessen had moved on enabled him to travel throughout the Muslim tion as a guest professor of Kurdish Studies at to another part of the Muslim world, Indone- parts of Indonesia and get to know numerous the Institute for Ethnology of Berlin’s Free sia. A stroke of good luck landed him a tem- ulama and Muslim intellectuals. Having en- University. He was involved in drawing up porary research position at the Royal Institute countered many ulama affiliated with the ISIM’s research profile and was initially a of Linguistics and Anthropology (KITLV) in Naqshbandiyya, he began collecting material member of the academic committee but Leiden, which allowed him to spend consid- for a systematic survey of that Sufi order (pub- withdrew from it to apply for the ISIM chair at erable time in Indonesia (1983-84). His first re- lished as a book in Indonesian in 1992: Tare- Utrecht University. search project was concerned with whether kat Naqsyabandiyah di Indonesia, Mizan, His present research interests include shift- the Islamic resurgence and Islamic radicalism Bandung). ing religious and ethnic identities in , were triggered by rural-to-urban migration In 1991, after a brief period in the Nether- the transformation of Sufi orders in modern and relative deprivation, as has often been as- lands and in Kurdistan, he returned to Indo- urban settings, contemporary developments serted to be the case in the Middle East. In- nesia to teach sociology of religion and relat- in Muslim socio-political thought and civil so- stead of starting with Muslim radicals, howe- ed subjects at the State Institute of Islamic ciety, and transnational Muslim networks. ♦ ver, he decided to look at the situation of ru- Studies (IAIN) of Yogyakarta, within the ral-to-urban migrants who clearly experi- framework of the Indonesian- *A revised English version was published in 1992 enced relative deprivation and register their Cooperation in Islamic Studies (INIS). He re- as Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political responses. He lived in an urban slum in Band- mained there until early 1994, and wrote, Structures of Kurdistan, Zed Books, London.