ABSTRACT
Pamuk outlines the way in which this understanding of huzun, with its strong connotations of “loss and the spiritual agony and grief attending it,” found a natural home in modern Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.3 Pamuk also identifies a second tradition of interpreting huzun, however, one he says arises from Sufi mysticism and which suggests a more positive sense for the word. In a signal passage Pamuk writes:
To the Sufis, huzun is the spiritual anguish we feel because we cannot be close enough to Allah, because we cannot do enough for Allah in this world. A true Sufi follower would pay no attention to worldly concerns like death, let
Mardin, Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (Albany, 1989). For the broader historical context from a western perspective, see A Peace To End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the
alone goods or possessions: he suffers from grief, emptiness and inadequacy because he can never be close enough to Allah, because his apprehension of Allah is not deep enough. Moreover, it is the absence, not the presence, of huzun that causes him distress. It is the failure to experience huzun that leads him to feel it; he suffers because he has not suffered enough; and it is by following this logic to its conclusion that Islamic culture has come to hold huzun in high esteem.4
