Theological and Political Islamic Sects in Historiography of Contemporary Thought in the Republican Era: The Evaluation of Mehmed Ali Ayni's Ideas

The theological and political sects in Islam are the most important actors in the history of Islamic thought. With their emergence processes, representatives and ideas, they have been the pillars for history of our thought and the movements leading the thought. Theological and political Islamic sects in different fields of Islamic literature, has been an important issue in the works of the history of contemporary thought during the modernization process of the Ottoman Empire and afterward the period of modern Turkey’s establishment. In this context, Mehmed Ali Aynî, one of our historians of contemporary thought, was an important thinker who served as a bureaucrat and university professor in the Ottoman Empire. He is an intellectual who made evaluations in his works about scholars, thinkers and sects which are the keystones of Islamic thought tradition as well as history of philosophy and philosophy. It is important to see the tendencies in the formation stage of contemporary sectarian histo-riography in terms of transferring the Ottoman scientific heritage to the new era in the period when the nation-state model started to be applied under the influence of nationalism.