Ottoman History Podcast - Gender, Politics, and Passion in the Christian Middle East

Episode Date: March 8, 2016

with Akram Khater hosted by Graham Pitts . Scholars have long neglected the Middle East’s Christian communities in general and Christian women in particular. In this episode, Akram Khater draws attention to the biography of Hindiyya al-'Ujaimi (1720-1798) to explore the religious and political upheavals of 18th-century Aleppo and Mount Lebanon. Hindiyya’s story speaks to the dynamic history of the Maronite Church, the fraught encounter between Arab and European Christianities, and the role of faith as a historical force. For half a century, she held as much sway over the Maronite Church as any other cleric. The extent of her influence won her powerful enemies in Lebanon and the Vatican. Hindiyya weathered one inquisition but was eventually convicted of heresy and confined to a solitary cell for the final decade of her life. The story of her ascent and demise illuminates gendered aspects of piety and politics in the Christian Middle East. Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | Soundcloud Scholars have long neglected the Middle East’s Christian communities in general and Christian women in particular. In this episode, Akram Khater draws attention to the biography of Hindiyya al-'Ujaimi (1720-1798) to explore the religious and political upheavals of 18th-century Aleppo and Mount Lebanon. Hindiyya’s story speaks to the dynamic history of the Maronite Church, the  fraught encounter between Arab and European Christianities, and the role of faith as a historical force. For half a century, she held as much sway over the Maronite Church as any other cleric. The extent of her influence won her powerful enemies in Lebanon and the Vatican. Hindiyya weathered one inquisition but was eventually convicted of heresy and confined to a solitary cell for the final decade of her life. The story of her ascent and demise illuminates gendered aspects of piety and politics in the Christian Middle East. « Click for More »

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Graham Allman-Pitts, recording on location at North Carolina State's newly founded Moïse Khirela Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies. Today we have the pleasure of hosting Akram Fouad Khater, Professor of History at North Carolina State University, Editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Director of the Khairallah Center. Welcome to the podcast, Akram. Thank you, Graham.

Our topic today is the second of your two historical monographs, Embracing the Divine, Passion and Politics in the Christian Middle East, which centers on the life of an 18th century Maronite saint, Hindia Lojami, who was born in Aleppo in 1720, had her first vision of Christ at age 12, rose to the heights of Maronite ecclesiastical life where she remained for decades, faced two inquisitions, weathered the first, but was convicted of heresy in 1778, and spent the last 20 years of her life alone and imprisoned. Hindia's triumph over patriarchy and patriarchal authority is striking. She challenged local religious elites,

successfully resisted the imposition of the authority of the Jesuit fathers, and goes on to snub the edicts of the Pope himself. So sort of the first intervention you make is about how Hindia's story fits into these bigger social transformations that are happening in the city of Aleppo in the early 18th century. So I think the way we understand Hindia, but not only Hindia, but a host of other characters, many of them women within Aleppo, is that they come at the nexus of two major transformations that are taking place. One is really what is a mercantilist slash capitalist transformation. Aleppo was in the throes of this upswing, economic upswing, because it was at the center of this merchant and trade network. And so you see a rise of a bourgeoisie that is predominantly Christian.

Not all, of course, but predominantly. And so that is one element. And the second element is this religious effervescence that transforms religion and faith within Aleppo, both for the Malchite as well as for the Maronites. And so she comes at the intersection of those two things. And in essence, what is happening here is that the very rules of society, the rules of gender relations, the rules of what religion and faith means, the rules of social class are being transformed and they're up for grabs. And Hindia sees this opportunity in many ways as a place for her to make an intervention into what

it means to be a Maronite Christian and not just a Maronite Christian, but a Christian in general. a Maronite Christian, and not just a Maronite Christian, but a Christian in general. So that is really, those two elements are really what gives her the space to challenge the authorities as she did throughout her life. And there's a contradiction embedded in the reform movement pursued by these Latin missionaries, many of whom are Jesuits, in that they want Eastern Christians to conform to the rules of the Vatican, wherein nuns don't share quarters with monks, wherein nuns are cloistered and silent and away from the rest of the society. But at the same time, they realize that they need to rely on women, that they need to get women sort of on their side to get Aleppine Christians to buy into their reform.

So how does India's story sort of speak to those contradictions? Well, I mean, I think this is a conundrum of any modernization project. We tend to think of modernization in the Middle East as a 19th century phenomena that goes on into the 20th century. And one of the central arguments I make is that, at least at the level of religious reforms, we see the same elements of modernization happening a century earlier. And this conundrum or paradox of modernization is, on one hand, it attempts to liberate the

individual or pretends to liberate the individual, but at the same time, it is actually creating a system of disciplining the individual, male or female. But women, of course, are very central to the modernizing project, whether it is a secular one or, in the case of the 18th century Aleppo and the Middle East in general, a religious one. And so on one hand, women become the vector for bringing in new ideas about faith and religiosity as defined by the Western Roman Catholic experience. And they are the vectors because they're supposed to be, and this is very much an echo of the 19th century or pre-echo, if you will,

they are the mothers and the wives and the ones who will bring up the children in this particular faith. And they are the ones that are supposedly most malleable to the transformation. But there's a limit to how much the Jesuits and Franciscans and Capuchins and other missionaries will allow these women to go,

which is a limit that they cannot challenge their authority. And in that sense, this is, again, another paradox that you see with Hindia, of course, and other women, by the way. What they did is they accepted the notion that there is a new type of religiosity which is premised on individual relationship with Christ and God, and then they took it to its logical extreme, which basically means that they could challenge any institution

because now they can bypass that institution by having that personal relationship with Christ as Hindia demonstrated over and over again in her life. Why do you think scholars have been loathe to see this as a sort of modern development that's happening in Aleppo, that's happening in Arab Christian communities in the early 18th century? in the early 18th century? Well, I think one thing is modernity and the modern has been a very complex subject and a complex project. And in many ways, it's been embroiled with Westernization.

I mean, there has been this kind of direct intimacy that we see between sort of this idea of Westernization and modernization. And we see it as a primarily secular project. And so there's already inherent bias in that notion that the only time we can see evidence modernization and modernization. And we see it as a primarily secular project. And so there's already in here and bias in that notion that the only time we can see evidence of modernity is when it is leaning towards the secular. Now, what we do begin to see developing is with Islamic reformist movement, right?

With the Salafi movement, with people like Muhammad Abdu'l-Rashid Rida and people like that, we begin to ascribe it to some religious elements, some religious institutions. But still, the predominant notion is that secularism is a hallmark of modernity. And so to go back to the 18th century created problems for most scholars, or a bit of a difficulty. A, that this reform movement that I'm addressing here is predominantly within the rubric of religion. And two, the 18th century is not seen as a time of great transformations because we are in many ways taken by the idea that Napoleon's arrival in 1798

is really what launches this whole transformational process. And in essence, when we look at the transformational agents, we tend to see them as, like Napoleon, political leaders or primarily secular leaders within the 19th century. And so we don't really give much due to either the Latin missionaries or, more importantly, to the local indigenous agents of change in the 18th century. And you push that intervention even further, pushing back against the scholarship that hasn't always taken faith, hasn't always seen the potential for faith to be a historical mover in its own right. I mean, so maybe you can introduce us a little more to Hindia and her childhood in Aleppo and talk about how you see her personal faith is shaping her historical

experience. Sure, absolutely. Let me address the larger point first, and then I'll go back to Hindia. I think in many ways, modernity, again, that's another aspect of sort of the notion of secular modernity, has posited itself as the new religion. And in many ways, it has pushed religion to the side and kept it contained with this idea of either institutional or political change, but not in terms of personal faith. Because the whole notion of modernity is rationalism. And within rationalism is discarding the idea of the supernatural as an element of historical transformation.

We as 21st century, and even in the 20th century, and even in the 19th century, as in many ways the byproducts of the Enlightenment project, we still have a suspicion of faith because it's completely intangible. How does one account for people's faith? How do we account for the fact that in the 18th century, people actually did believe in evil spirits? And that belief wasn't simply just a passing belief. It was a foundational belief that moved them to take actions. And in other words, that moved them to make history. And that's a very difficult thing to quantify. And we always need evidence, something tangible.

And I think that's been very problematic. and I'm completely sympathetic to how difficult it is to do that. But nonetheless, just because it is difficult doesn't mean that it's not a very powerful element of historical transformation, especially when we put ourselves in the place of people like India, who were not looking upon the apparition of Christ as just some sort of hallucination, who were not looking upon the idea that there are evil forces in the world, as if it's just some sort of figment of the imagination. They really believed in this. They acted upon that belief.

They acted upon the belief in the sense in which they looked upon each other, how they interacted with each other, how they interacted with the natural world. And I think in that sense, faith becomes an absolutely essential element of understanding the peoples of the 18th century. And in doing so, giving it space. Now with Hindia, of course she grew up in this religious effervescence

that I talked about, in which Latin missionaries were bringing in the idea of this individual spirituality and faith that is mobilized by creating a personal relationship with Christ. Something that is not just cultural, it's not a holiday-based Christianity. This is a Christianity that is absolutely subjective in that sense. The subject is a person who creates this absolute passion, and they wanted to create that passion for Christ as a way of mobilizing a new type of Christianity. Well, for Hindia, and for other people as well, male and female,

they accepted this call, if you will, and they took it seriously. And this was mobilized by imagery, by public theater, and processions, by new kind of catechism, by new publications on the press. It was literally in the air around them. And the images were very powerful and moving. And Hindia, for whatever reason, becomes very moved with this and acts upon it. She becomes this person who sees herself as a conduit of Christ and his will upon earth. And this is a sort of a belief that she has and she acts upon throughout her life. Now, from the outside, we can analyze it as some sort of psychological problem, as possibly epilepsy. There are all sorts of explanations that people take,

but for her and her cohorts, this was real. And her seeing Christ was not theoretical. It was very real to her. And it moved her in a very passionate way. And this is what I think is very important to understand, that this passion is a very powerful element that we cannot discard, even though, again, I understand it is difficult to historicize. For me, this theme of Hindia being moved by her faith really came out in her move from Aleppo to Mount Lebanon. You say that her house in Bourgeois Aleppo was worth more money than a whole monastery in Lebanon, for instance. They lived

very comfortably in Aleppo, her class of people did. And they used their religiosity in some way as a way to, you know, re-emphasize their, the dominance of their class, which makes it on the surface hard to understand why she would move to Mount Lebanon and live in a monastery, sleeping on the floor with five other women, very sort of austere surroundings, fasting all the time, years of deprivation. I mean, how would she have been motivated to do this, you know, except by faith? So, can you talk a little bit about, you know, her biography? She moves to Mount Lebanon, and she wins the support of the Maronite ecclesiastical authorities. How does that happen?

How does she convince them that her relationship with Christ is authentic? What motivates her to leave Aleppo is that she reaches a dead end with her spiritual advisor who's a Jesuit. He is beginning to be very troubled by her tendency to want to claim complete control over her visions and over her path. Originally, he really was very much motivated, like many spiritual advisors in medieval Europe or in Latin America, by the potential power of her visions, if he can control them. The problem for him came to be that she wanted to be independent. She was no longer willing to contain that spirituality within what she saw to be the artificial constraints that he was placing upon her. Because to her, it was very logical. If at first he sort of encouraged her to have this personal relationship with Christ,

and Christ told her that she is to be, in essence, a visionary woman that is going to bring a new interpretation of the gospel and Christ's will to the population, then she could not understand why this Jesuit advisor would say to her, yes, up to this degree, but no beyond that. So I think this dead end in terms of the relationship she saw as constrained. So that's one part of it. The other part is that Aleppo remains a very bourgeois place. She grew up in a very bourgeois environment. And in essence, there is this rupture in her

between the city and the mountain. And in that sense, what gets to be mobilized in her vision and in the vision of a lot of Christian reformers at that time is of Lebanon as a holy land, as a sacred space, where in many ways Aleppo was a profane space. She was mostly ridiculed clearly by her surroundings. Her peers really couldn't understand what is she going on about, being such an ascetic.

After her mother's death, in essence, the one person who seemed to be able to control her, she was left with her father, who did not seem to have a whole lot of power over her. So both the pull of this imaginary of Lebanon as a sacred space and the push of the limits that the spiritual advisor wants to put on her and the profane environment, what she perceived to be the profane environment of Aleppo,

ultimately combined to help her emigrate and make her own, if you will, hajj, to use sort of an Islamic term here, to the mountains of Lebanon. Now, of course, when she arrives there, what she imagined and the reality are a little bit, there's a discrepancy. She imagined, of course, that she's going to be received, you know, with all the relations and, you know, as this wonderful savior. But there's a very difficult path ahead of her. And two, while she was in the comfort of her home in Aleppo, what she imagined life is going to be in Mount Lebanon was very different.

She imagined, again, is this mountain that is filled with spiritual, the sacred. But she arrives and it's a very hard life, very cold, very miserable. So this is something she didn't anticipate you don't have a sense that she knew what life among these nuns was going to entail in terms of hard work in terms of deprivation not at all i mean i think to her it was an absolute shock it's a shock that a people didn't accept her as a visionary right away that they were suspicious of this eleppan girl who's coming was young, and proclaiming herself to be a conduit for Christ. But two, I mean, she was literally a very bourgeois city young woman, right? And she imagined something about Mount Lebanon, but she arrives, and it's very hard life.

It is tilling the land. It is structures that are very different architecturally in terms of from the mansion she grew up in Aleppo. There are low-lying ceilings, cold, miserable, drafty environments. These are cold environments. And it's certainly also very different from the culture of the city where everything is available.

And so in essence, I think it was a big shock for her, both the initial rejection of who she was and to the physical environment that she dwelled in. But ultimately, she saw this as her via dolorosa, you know, right? I mean, this is a notion that she has to go through this process

to cleanse herself. So she translates this, the rejection and the difficult physical environment, into her own path that Christ followed. It's her own cross to bear. And in gendered ways too. I mean, you say that she mobilizes a sort of series of stereotypes about women's place in the church as meek, as humble, and that, of course, that Christ's revelation came in this form. Absolutely. I mean, I think every aspect of her experience was gendered in terms of her visions,

in terms of her relationship to Christ. And I think if you look at her relationship with Christ, for example, originally we started out with her when she was young, seeing Christ as a little boy, an infant. As she grows older and matures and comes of age, really, Christ becomes a man. And in many ways, what is really striking and what really upset the ecclesiastical authorities, especially the Latin one, was that she personalized and embodied Christ as very human. And her relationship to him was very bodily relationship, right? Of course, there were the visions that he gave her, the instructions he gave her, but there were almost this kind of sexual and beyond sexual, but also this personal tension between her and him, where he would ask her to

do something and she would demure or she would refuse there was the physical touch the feeling the sense of it and it was this constant back and forth between her and him so for her her understanding of christianity and of christ in particular was very much through her body and that of course troubled a church that was very male-oriented, and even a Roman Catholic church that was very, quote-unquote, rational. It was undergoing its own counter-reformation and enlightenment, incorporating the hyper-rationality and the idea that women should be dismissed. And so her dismissal she saw as simply another manifestation of what women have to go through in a male-controlled church. From what you're saying there in terms of her physical or even sexual relationship with Christ,

we start to see how she fell afoul of the Vatican, also by establishing her own religious order, which in normative terms shouldn't happen but with the permission of the Vatican. But then she weathers the first Inquisition in 1752 when she's in her early 30s. Sort of how does she do that? And the other question, I mean, I would add, how do the tensions surrounding Hindia in the 1750s reflect this bigger encounter between Latin Christianity and Eastern Christianity? After a very difficult initial period when she arrives in Mount Lebanon, after she had left Aleppo, she begins to find a sponsor.

And she finds a sponsor in two forms. One is an individual sponsor, that is a bishop who takes upon himself the role of a spiritual advisor. She convinces him that she truly is a bishop who takes upon himself the role of a spiritual advisor. She convinces him that she truly is a visionary. And in that sense, that was important to her because it gives her an access to the power of the Maronite Church, which was in control of this. But she finds a sponsor really in the Maronite Church as a whole. And what I mean by that is that the church was undergoing its own reformation.

And it was trying to figure out, this is based on the 1732 Council, in which the Roman Catholic Church was trying to bring the Maronite Church within its orbit, closer, and to exercise greater control over everything, whether it is the appointment of the patriarch or the bishops, or whether it is the legal process, whether it is catechism, the education of priests, you name it, the Roman Catholic Church was basically trying to bring them closer and tighter. At the same time, what you see emerging is a patriarch, as well as a set of bishops, who were pushing back.

They wanted to claim independence. After all, the patriarch saw himself as a descendant of the, really, the original church. And the Roman Catholic Church, in some ways, was Johnny-come the, really, the original church. And the Roman Catholic church in some ways was Johnny-come-lately, if you will. So they didn't need sort of the legitimacy of the pope. They were an autonomous Catholic power in their own right. They saw equal to that of Rome. Absolutely. That's exactly right. They needed Rome, but they needed Rome on their own terms. They needed Rome as a political ally. They needed Rome as a protector within the Ottoman Empire in case they ever required that kind of protection.

It's interesting here because at the same time they're claiming, and this is the sort of all Maronite historians during this period and before had made it their project to emphasize their eternal orthodoxy. So did they sense a contradiction there? This orthodoxy that they imagined in Maronite history, it didn't put them at odds with Rome. Well, not really. I mean, I think they, of course, you're absolutely right.

I mean, I think there was a rewriting of history beginning with, you know, late 17th century about how they have always been Catholic and they had never strayed from the Catholic faith. about how they have always been Catholic, and they had never strayed from the Catholic faith. But in doing so, they weren't only trying to fit within the rubric of orthodoxy as defined by Rome, but more importantly, they're also saying, we have been Catholics before Rome was Catholic, right?

And I think that's important to them. I mean, they take it back all the way to the 6th century with Mar Maroon or Saint Maroon, this kind of character that is an amalgam, really really of two different characters, and they create this whole story about how he always was Catholic. So by giving themselves that genealogy of faith, they ultimately are laying the foundation for claiming that within the East, the Maronite Church has always been the Catholic Church, and they do not need Rome for that matter. So there's a political tug-of-war. On one hand, they did need Rome to provide political support in an environment where they are indeed a minority in the Ottoman Empire. On the other hand,

they were very jealous of controlling the local situation, whether it is in terms of confessions, in terms of collecting taxes, whatever aspect of it. And so, Handia comes into the midst of this tug of war. And for a patriarch who was both educated in Rome, but keen to maintain the independence of the Maronite church and the independence of his title, she becomes a very powerful ally, and some would argue instrument. Because she, in essence, is not all, there's a historical genealogy for the Maronite church that precedes Rome, if you will. But now, in essence, is not all, there's a historical genealogy for the Maronite church that precedes Rome, if you will. But now it's even more powerful. Now there is this woman, a visionary woman, that can give the Maronites their own living saint and own direct line to

Christ, who's the ultimate authority, who completely surpasses the Pope. And in that sense, Hindia becomes a very valuable asset in this regard. It mobilizes faith, it excites the Christian passions amongst the population, but it does so from within the rubric of the Maronite church. And that is the best thing they could hope for. So the church, the Maronite patriarch and the bishops were very interested in creating this religious effervescence and maintaining it, which gives them, obviously, power and authority. But they wanted to do it within the rubric of Maronite church, not outside of it. And India was instrumental in that.

And they succeed in doing so. By the 1760s, they've gotten the blessing of the Pope for her order, which they established without permission. Her order becomes the richest ecclesiastical organization in Mount Lebanon. Absolutely. So, I mean, the first inquisition, the inquisitor who happened to be a Latin monk who resided in Jerusalem was asked to come up and, in essence, interrogate Hindia. And he concludes his report by saying, I thought I was going to encounter a stream of faith, and I found myself awash in a sea of religiosity. So clearly he was absolutely taken by Hindia. Hindia clearly was a very charismatic individual in the sense that those who encountered her were taken by her

personality, by her ideas, by her vision. One of the problems of reading text, of course, is that text is devoid of any passion. It's very difficult to access the orality of it. And so when we read her writings, it looks stilted, contradictory at times, not terribly exciting, right? In many ways,

it seems like the writings of somebody who was in 8th grade almost at times. But if you translate that into her voice, her physical presence, and the environment in which she was in, it becomes a very powerful motivation. And that's why the first Inquisition, she was completely acquitted. And then Rome said, in essence, we will turn a blind eye to whatever you do. It's your business. You go ahead and do it.

So they won the first round in that sense. And so when she establishes her order, it was in many ways because Rome did not want to lose the Maronites. And the Maronite church and the Maronite elites, the Khazans to be exact, threatened both the Jesuits with expulsion and Rome with separation if they don't lay off Hindia. And this is an interesting point. How does she get the Khazan Sheikhs invested in her? What's this alliance? Because sometimes you describe tension between these people coming from Aleppo

and clerics and nuns who are indigenous to Mount Lebanon. But Hindia seems to have a lot of sway over elites and commoners. Well, I think at the beginning, again, we have to sort of go back to the notion that her visions were very real to a lot of people. So her reputation as a miracle worker, for example, as a person who can heal the sick, becomes to be developed. Now, whether we as latter-day observers see that as a hoax or not is really irrelevant.

What is relevant is the fact that those around her, including the elites, who are very much believers in the same thing that the Amiya believed in, they actually took her to be seriously a woman who can work miracles and who spoke to Christ and through whom Christ spoke. So in that religious effervescence moment, she brought to them something new and they accepted that.

But also I think, you know, very much like all, you know, the, not only the Maronite church, the elites saw her as bringing a great deal of interest and glory to this Mount Lebanon, because Mount Lebanon, quite honestly, was not that central of a place. It was a backwater. It was a backwater. I mean, the reality is the Maronites and Aleppo were wealthier, more educated, and more influential in many different ways. Now, in Mount Lebanon, the elites had aspirations to be like the Aleppans, and here she is, originally from Aleppo, coming to Mount Lebanon

and in essence planting her order there and developing it there and bringing into the order, by the way, some of their daughters, right? So that becomes another way of class status that my daughter is going to the, you know, the convent that Hindia runs. So there are all these elements that are combining

to give her, you know, gravitas, if you will. And now welcome back to the Ottoman History Podcast, where we're recording on location at NC State University. I'm talking about Akram Khater's second historical monograph, Embracing the Divine. And so, more than 20 years after the first inquisition, there's a second inquisition against Hindia that leads to her downfall. What's behind that? Why does her fortune turn?

In the interlude between when she first established her order in the early 1750s and then 1778 when the second inquisition comes about, what we find is that Hindia's fortunes grow exponentially. The number of convents, the number of novices, initiates and nuns, the amount of land and other kind of property that she owns is growing very fast. Her influence seems to be growing equally well. So certainly, one would have been surprised to see her demise happen so quickly. And I think in many ways here, what we find is that within the religious order that Hindia develops, we see the rise of tensions. Now the tensions are predominantly at the beginning between the folks who are Baladi,

they are from Mount Lebanon, they're called the Baladiyat, and the Halabiyat, the Aleppine nuns. So her religious aura is a mixture of two groups. But from the outset, it appears that Hindia favored the Aleppines. She favored them in terms of positions within the religious order. She favored them in terms of living quarters. She favored them in terms of how much food they got. So she basically saw them as at a class higher. So in many ways, she never lost her class consciousness. She remained a

bourgeois Aleppine woman who came to Mount Lebanon and who saw the squalor and the poverty. And rather than embrace it really fully, she distanced herself by her behavior. She ate better food, she lived in easier quarters, or at least that is the accusations that were leveled against her. So clearly there are tensions within the religious order. So that's one element. The other element is that she begins to be doubted. Those who come closer to her begins to doubt how religious she truly is. Including her brother. Including her brother,

who really is constantly oscillating between first, you know, being against her as a Jesuit priest, then comes to be close to her and supports her against the Jesuits, then he completely departs from her and says that she is nothing more than, you know, a facade. She's not real. And so, but there are other, there are nuns, primarily nuns who are from Mount Lebanon, who are truly resentful, of course, of the special treatment she affords the Aleppine nuns. But I think more importantly, aside from that, they really begin to doubt that she is really that holy, that she is that close to Christ. They begin to suspect that she is making all of this up. And in essence, the very basis of her authority, religious authority,

basis of her power, is being challenged from within. And her convent and her religious order split into two parts, two camps really. One for her, one against her. And what really brings this to a head is an exorcism in which two women are beaten

and in essence, they die. And they're beaten by a monk who's affiliated with one of the convents that Hindia runs. Now Hindia was not in the convent at the time and Hindia always claimed that she had nothing to do with it, that it was Katrina, her assistant, who carried out the exorcism with the help of this monk. But in essence, the issue, regardless of whether she was there or not, whether she encouraged this or not, is beside the point. The reality is these two nuns, who were the daughters of a very wealthy Beirut-based merchant, died, are killed. And they are killed, quote-unquote, from the point of view of those who are for Hindia,

because they belonged to some sort of satanic cult that developed within the convent. And there was an exorcism that was taking place, and they were killed in that process. And all these salacious accusations emerge during the 1778 Inquisition about the sorts of things that have been happening in the monastery. But you argue the problem that the Vatican has with Hindia is the fact that she has transgressed papal authority. They sort of don't convict her at the end about anything that has to do with these allegations of fornication or of the murder of these nuns. Right. That becomes a pretext. It's a very valid pretext. It's a pretext in which

the secular authorities within Mount Lebanon take seriously. And, you know, there is a notion of a trial that there are two women that are killed and somebody had to be held accountable. And that's a real issue. However, if you look at the transcripts of the Inquisition by the person who was sent from Rome, even before he set foot in Rome, he was sending letters about how he saw India as nothing more than a charlatan, a charlatan who has played on the sympathies and on the naive ideas that the patriarch and the bishops and, in fact, all the Maronites held. So, in other words, he's already coming prepared to argue that the religious hierarchy and the religious followers of the Maronite church are all naive, and they're naive because they haven't adhered to the principles of the Roman Catholic church. In other words, they were just completely

taken by Hindia because they are not really following the precepts that the church had laid. So that was the basic premise, number one. Number two is that, and it's also evidence of the first problem, is they allowed this woman so much power. And anybody who allows women that much power clearly is a person who does not understand Christianity. Who's a fool. Who's a fool. And who has accepted a very ridiculous notion of Christianity. A very sort of, to put it in class terms,

a very lower class, peasant, a traditional, superstitious type of Christianity, not the educated, rational type of Christianity that both Rome as well as this Inquisitor held. So by the time he lands, he already has made a prejudgment on the matter. And he sets about collecting evidence that she indeed was very knowledgeable about what happened to these two nuns, but more importantly, that she is a charlatan. That was his first point. And that no woman, in essence, could really have,

she could not, as a woman, specifically as a woman, have had anything to do with Christ. That Christ did not give her any visions, that she made it all up. And he spent all of his time, and in fact, his energies even after the Inquisition concluded, to prove that that is indeed the case that as a woman she was either you know beset by the devil because she's a woman after all and that makes her very susceptible to the wiles of satan or that she was absolutely

insane and she made all of this up so it could not be anything else beyond that. And then subsequently she's convicted of heresy, sentenced to solitary confinement, where she lives for 20 more years of her life. All of her writings are banned. But you argue that sort of the legacy of Hindia went on. And we surmise this on the one hand, because they're still looking for her writings 10 years later, i.e. they still view the things that she's written, looking for her writings 10 years later, i.e. they still view the things that she's written, including the secret of the union, as a threat. And furthermore, there's a religious order founded in Aleppo sometime later because the women who were the nuns of her order were dispersed. They were sent back home, and they go back to Aleppo, and they inspire the founding of the Bantashiat order. Can you tell us a little bit about them? Sure. So, Hediya is indeed convicted, and she dies in a lonely death in 1798,

almost when Napoleon is arriving in Cairo, actually. And she insists until the end of her life that she's innocent. She keeps writing letters to Rome saying, I am innocent. I did have visions. She never recants the idea that she had visions ever. So she holds on to that. Her assistant, Katrina, who supposedly carried out the physical exorcism, or at least oversaw them, disappears. She was being taken to jail somewhere, and somehow along the way in a mysterious fashion she disappears,

and with her disappear copies of Nia's writings as well. And that's why we end up also they continue to circulate we know that they continue to circulate as you alluded to because 10 years after the fact Rome is still very impatiently saying where the heck are all those writings but her influence isn't only in terms of her writings or as you alluded to that there are other women who take up, if you will, the mantle of creating a religious order that is independent of Rome, that gets its inspiration directly from Christ, that bypasses the Pope and bypasses... That, of course, is very powerful in that regard. But I think in many ways, she continues to shape the Maronite Church itself. powerful in that regard. But I think in many ways, she continues to shape the Maronite church itself.

Because as I said earlier, the Maronite church was using, as much as, you know, Hindia used the church, they were using her as a bulwark against the Vatican. And I think although they were chastised and there were letters of, you know, sorrow and, you know, apologies and what have you. The reality is the way the church functioned at an institutional level continued to be influenced by the way Hindia saw this. In other words, the type of faith, the type of religiosity that Hindia influenced and shaped in her long career, really, as a visionary, didn't disappear just because she disappeared or because the patriarch wrote a letter of apology. It continued to permeate the practice of Catholicism within the mountains of Lebanon,

and I would argue, of course, within Aleppo as well. So I think in that sense, that is a very powerful notion. But also, and as you alluded to, this idea, again, of religious authority. Hindia challenged the notion, who has the right to speak for the church, in essence? Who is the ultimate authority for the church? For the Roman Catholic Church, it's the Pope.

And underneath him, the Cardinals, and then, of course, the Jesuits, who are the shock troops of the Catholic Church. The reality is, Hindia says, I don't think so. I think the ultimate authority is Christ, and Christ, of course, speaks through human beings. He's speaking through me. And she argues that he speaks mostly through women. That notion of women as the central conduit for the will of Christ remains very much within

Elapo and Mount Lebanon a very real aspect. Of course, the male authorities are fighting against it, but the very fact that they're fighting against it all the way through the 19th century tells you how much of a belief it continues to believe, to be in that regard. And I just have a couple more questions, the first of which is, I know your sympathy for peasant history from your first monograph, but how do we know, I mean, you did a lot of archival research in different countries to produce this monograph. How do we know sort of how common, how the rural masses

in Lebanon perceived India? What do we know about their sort of peasant religiosities? So the first part is the growth of her convents, property and wealth is all a reflection of

donations that were given primarily by peasants. The elites gave her some, you know, some property and some land, but the reality is her wealth, which, you know, by all measures was quite fabulous wealth in the end, was given by donations of the peasants. We know that many people would literally make the trek all the way from Aleppo to her to seek her a miracle of some sort, to heal or what have you. So we know that people were beating a path to her in that regard. And we know that the fact that her writing survived within the rural climate of Mount Lebanon was due to the fact that she had a lot of allies around her. It's not to say she didn't have enemies.

She did, of course. The Maronite population and the church were split. But nonetheless, she had a lot of allies. Now, how we know about religious practices of the peasants, in many ways, it's not from my work, obviously. But there are a lot of works that have been done in this time period. And actually, one of the best works that I've seen is a work that just simply was recently published

about this rural religion, if you will, this kind of countryside religion. And of course, now the name is eluding me, so I have to apologize for that. It's... We'll put it in the bibliography. There's been research that sort of shows us this kind of religiosity that we have.

But more than that, I have to say, is that Hindia's reputation and stories told about Hindia continue to permeate. And I remember growing up, my father would mention her and also the story that's told about her, that she had a son who would ride a mule

and go to India. Hindia, of course, the Indians. So she supposedly, and of course, this is like Burak and Muhammad, of course, taking the horse from Mecca all the way to Jerusalem on Burak. This is a reversal of that. But that story was circulating. And in fact, there was a recent play that was done about, I think, five or six years ago about Hindia in Lebanon.

So her story continues to circulate and permeate this. And that's despite really strenuous efforts to completely silence her. I mean, there was concerted effort throughout the 19th century to completely silence her, dismiss her as an insane woman. And yet her stories continue to circulate, both as stories that are admired, but also, I think more importantly, in the practice of religion, you still see her cropping up in terms of how, in essence, most people practice Catholicism not really in the church and through the male authorities, and that frustrates the church to no end still, but actually through lighting candles to Mary.

Right? I mean, the reference, the main reference continues to be a woman. The Marian cult continues to thrive. And if you look at most of the saints in Lebanon, they tend to be female. Masharabil, of course, is very important, but most of the saints are female. So women's role within shaping and perpetuating religiosity continues to be the case. My last question, and I think this will be on the mind of the listeners of the Ottoman History Podcast is, what's the position of central Ottoman authorities, if there is one, in regards to Hindia and this conflict around her life?

Do they have a horse in this race at all? Is this something they want to keep their hands off? I know that would come out more in Aleppo than it would in Mount Lebanon, but do we know anything about that? Remarkably, there's very little record about her within the Ottoman archives from what I can tell. Remarkably, there's very little record about her within the Ottoman archives from what I can tell. Nor do we see any reference that Rome made to the Ottoman authority asking them to carry out actions. Now, Rome did ask the local authorities, the emir, Bashir in Mount Lebanon. And if you consider him to be, of course, a representative of the Ottoman government, then in that sense, absolutely, yes. So it is, but it was very localized.

And Aleppo, I think the Ottoman authorities intervened only when any such occurrence would threaten, you know, law and order, would threaten taxes or anything other than that. Other incidents we know that the Ottoman authorities only intervened when there was a petition that was made to the central government or to the governor of the valley to do something about either the missionaries or to do something about some local religious authority. So we see that happening in the records. But with India, it's remarkably quiet. We don't see much in that regard. I'm not quite sure what to make of that in all honesty. I've thought about that quite a bit. And it clearly didn't, given the

fact that it produced thousands, literally thousands of pages, her whole case, if you go to the Vatican archives, there are thousands of pages about Hindia. In the Maronite archives, as you very well know, the Patriarchate, what they allowed me to see anyway, were literally hundreds of pages. We know that in a time of low technology, that the Jesuits were creating multicolored posters that were attacking India, and they were producing them in hundreds

and distributing them throughout Mount Lebanon and Aleppo. Clearly, this was an incredibly important thing, yet silence, complete silence. And that is very interesting. But, I mean, obviously, the one obvious answer is that they saw it as nothing to do with either the central government, the Ottoman authority, or law and order, and as such, it didn't really matter much. But I have to also add one thing here. I think, aside from the fact that the book looks at the episode of this one particular woman and the community of Christians,

I think what's important to keep in mind is that the history of Christians within the Middle East has been elided. We don't really hear much about them in general. Again, obviously, as I just finished talking about the Ottoman archives, that may be partly because of that, but I think it's more important because, unfortunately, we have entered what I consider to be a neo-Orientalist phase in which Islam becomes the dominant theme, in which the way we explain a lot of the historical events or the historical events that we pay attention to anyway

tend to be focused on that. And I think that's very unfortunate because there's a lot of history. Even the critiques of Orientalism fall prey to this. Absolutely. Absolutely in this regard. And unfortunately, that creates a one-dimensional notion of the Middle East, as Orientalism that Edward Said critiqued had done before. So we don't see the incredibly complex mixture of things happening, and people, and society. And we don't understand the incredibly complex mixture of things happening and people and society. And we don't understand, for example, Aleppo as a place where Christians played a key role in the 18th century in shaping it. Now, of course, Bruce Masters and others have looked at this.

But what I'm saying here is that this is beyond, you know, just focusing on one particular community and bringing their history to light or beyond bringing women into the history of religion, which they are completely absent from for the most part. I mean, Saba Mahmoud's work on religiosity in Egypt and mosques is brilliant, and that brings out some great ideas. But we still are in need of focusing on gender and women within religious studies within Middle East or religious history. But ultimately also, I think what is really important to understand is that Christians in this time period preceded the Nahda of the 19th

century. I mean, this reform movement, yes, it's religious, but what it produced in terms of intellectual pursuits and productions and, quote-unquote, modernization, is very relevant to looking at the Nahda period of the 1830s and thereafter. And I think it's, so, in that sense

I'm making an intervention in the sense that we cannot focus only on the 19th century. We have to look at the 18th century. But more importantly, we cannot just keep our gaze focused on Islam and men. We have to look at gender and women, and we have to look at non-Muslim communities and how they shape that history. Absolutely. And by way of wrapping up, I think an important contribution that comes out in the book, more than we can bring it out in the podcast, is that you've taken these units where you have Latin missionaries, where you have local Christians, where you have women, where you have men,

where you have families, and you haven't only looked at those as discrete units interacting with one another. You've looked at the cleavages within those groups. Some Latin missionaries are on Hindia's side, some are opposed. Some people in her family are supporting her, some are against. Some of her biggest conflicts are with other nuns in Mount Lebanon. And so I think that complexity really makes it worthwhile for the listeners to check out the book. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, Akram.

It's been great. Thank you so much, Graham. Please check today, Akram. It's been great. Thank you so much, Graham. Please check out upcoming episodes on our website and Facebook group. Thank you once again for tuning in to the Ottoman History Podcast. That's all for today. Goodbye. Altyazı M.K.