Director's Message
Uskudar University, which has placed the approach of “understanding the human being” at the foundation of all its activities, established the Institute For Sufi Studies in July 2014 through the joint efforts of Prof. Dr. Nevzat Tarhan, Founding Rector of Uskudar University and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and Cemalnur Sargut, founder of the Kerim Foundation. Drawing on the holistic perspective of Sufism, the Institute aims to foster the development of individuals who have made it their pursuit to better understand science, themselves and the world; who have internalized the spiritual and moral dimensions of the human being; and who are sensitive to the arts, thoughtful, inquisitive, creative, hardworking, tolerant and aware of the value of time. Another aim of the Institute is to contribute to the development of the intellectual foundation and the refined sensibility necessary for an adequate understanding of Sufi subjects.
Uskudar University offers undergraduate education in medicine, psychology, sociology, philosophy, history, bioengineering, molecular biology, genetics, software- and electronics-oriented engineering branches, forensic sciences, international relations and communication. In addition to its Graduate Schools of Health Sciences, Social Sciences and Sciences, the University, through its Institutes of Forensic Sciences and Sufi Studies, conducts master's and doctoral programs in many disciplines, ranging from clinical and applied psychology to social services, from behavioral sciences and neuroscience to various branches of forensic sciences, and from engineering applications to the humanities. The University hosts 34 application and research centers. The Institute For Sufi Studies is part of a vibrant scientific and cultural atmosphere structured in interrelation with one another.
As the first academic body in the history of Türkiye's modern universities to focus on Sufi studies outside the Faculties of Theology and Islamic Sciences, our Institute offers graduate education to those interested from every field, as well as continuing education opportunities that can reach every segment of society. With its unique institutional structure and foundation, the Institute is supported by the Kerim Foundation. The Uskudar University Institute For Sufi Studies is the natural beneficiary of the international academic initiative partnerships and collaborations developed by the Turkish Women's Cultural Association (1966) and the Kerim Foundation (2014). Within this framework, the Kenan Rifai Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina, the Kenan Rifai Chair of Islamic Studies at the Institute for Advanced Humanities, Peking University and the Kenan Rifai Center for Sufi Studies at Kyoto University are the sister institutes of our Institute.
Our country is the most important heir to the Sufi tradition of Islam and, with the sources it possesses, constitutes a veritable treasure. At the time when traditional Sufi institutions were closed (1925), Ken'an Rifai, one of the Ottoman Sufis of the last century, expressed that this heritage would always continue to be cultivated with the words, “Sufism will one day be taught in academies.” While this foresight states that Sufism will find its own place within the modern university system, it also points to the fact that many different disciplines today are in fact intertwined with “Sufi thought.” The ability to see ahead is possible only by knowing oneself, the society in which one lives and one's past well. The Institute has designated Sufi texts of the Seljuk and Ottoman periods as its main study material. These works in Arabic, Turkish and Persian, distilled from 1000 years of Islamic civilization, and especially those in Turkish, are not sufficiently known in international academic circles. Through its studies centered on Sufi texts of the Seljuk and Ottoman periods, the Institute contributes to increasing the international recognition of these works and to their taking the place they deserve in the literature.
The foundation of interdisciplinary studies lies in bringing together different disciplines and researchers from different disciplines, thereby expanding the possibilities of thinking without conventional constraints and beyond familiar patterns. We do not yet find sufficient accumulation in the literature regarding the new possibilities that will arise from the encounter of Sufism's own concepts and methods with other disciplines. The Institute works to contribute not only to the fields of Sufi thought, history and literature of Islamic civilization, but also, drawing on the outputs of the texts that serve as sources for these studies, to the formation of an intellectual foundation that generates solutions in every field that concerns society, produces added value, shares social responsibility and influences sustainable development. The encompassing language of Sufism, which unites knowledge with love, together with the programs and research it conducts, is making our Institute a center of worldwide interest within the broad network of the humanities.
Director of the Institute For Sufi Studies
Member of the Board of Directors of the Kerim Foundation
Prof. Dr. Elif ERHAN