ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the principal religious institutions and personnel of the Ottoman Arab provinces, and to show how they functioned within provincial society and how they contributed to the intellectual life of the provinces. Mysticism in Islam often goes under the name Sufism. This name supposedly derives from the Arabic word for wool, suf, because the early Muslim mystics were ascetics who wore rough woollen cloaks. Religious and intellectual life in the Ottoman Arab provinces encompassed a vast array of offices, movements and tendencies, and absorbed people from a wide variety of classes, regions, occupations and educational levels. The effect of religious figures, to say nothing of the broader category of intellectuals, on society was likewise wildly varied, ranging from the barely perceptible transmission of ideas among the intellectual elite to legal rulings affecting a broad cross-section of society to public activism that could close down a major urban bazaar.
