by Dr. Yeliz Teber (Wolfson College, University of Oxford) The Kizilbash/Alevism-Bektashism Symposium: New Corpora, Databases, and Digital Tools in Ottoman and Contemporary Contexts, generously supported by the Past & Present Society, was held successfully at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, on 22 May 2026. Convened by Dr. Yeliz Teber, Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, the symposium brought together established and emerging scholars working on the history, culture, religion, and heritage of Kizilbash/Alevi-Bektashi communities, who constitute the largest religious minority in today’s Sunni-majority Turkey. As the first event of its kind dedicated specifically to digitally engaged approaches to Kizilbash/Alevi-Bektashi studies, the symposium provided a unique platform for scholarly exchange on new methodologies, sources, and research questions within this rapidly expanding field. The symposium featured nine research papers presented by scholars from the UK and abroad, exploring a wide range of themes and long-standing questions in the field. In the morning panel, Mark Soileau advanced a novel methodological approach to the study of the hagiography of Hacı Bektaşi, a major text narrating the life and legends of the patron-saint of the Bektashi Sufi order, by drawing on a corpus of 103 manuscripts. Soileau demonstrated how the […]