The Dead who Remain Alive: Saint Tombs between Memory and History

This article examines the political and ontological significance of sacred space in Turkey surrounding Muslim saint tombs in light of secularizing policies implemented during the twentieth century. To draw a genealogy of the practice of veneration of Muslim saints, I focus on the tomb of Eyüp Sultan, which traditionally served as both a political center and a pilgrimage site in the Ottoman Empire. I analyze how sainthood is viewed as a form of superstition in the context of modernity, and how the secularization of sacred space is an attempt to redraw the contours of religion in accordance with the modernist ideology. I contextualize belief in saints as an example of how enchantment survives within modernity, as well as how memory acts as a powerful counterforce to official history writing. Finally, I contend that the different temporalities of modern and premodern worldviews compete for the status of saint tombs, posing a perennial paradox not only for Turkish secularism, but also for forms of modernist Islam that seek to expunge such practices.