«Nous étions tous stupéfaits et effrayés» : Émotions ottomanes face au surnaturel.

Abstract

Ottoman literature, from descriptions of the earth and from biographies of the great Sufi sheikhs to Evliya Çelebi’s narrative and from realistic novels to first-person narratives, is full of supernatural apparitions: ghosts and jinn, but mostly emissaries from the invisible world or ghayb appear often not only in fiction, but also in accounts purportedly relating faithfully real facts. Based on a sample of texts covering a large time span, this paper proposes a classification of the emotions described by Ottoman authors vis-à-vis the supernatural experience and suggests some hypotheses on what we can deduce regarding Ottoman attitudes toward the world and the Hereafter.