Research Article

Wandering Metaphors, Woven Worlds: Icons, Buddha-Idols and Demon-Deities from Inner Asia and India to Ottoman Europe

Number: 9 October 23, 2025
  • Zakir Hussein Gul *
TR EN

Wandering Metaphors, Woven Worlds: Icons, Buddha-Idols and Demon-Deities from Inner Asia and India to Ottoman Europe

Abstract

This article traces the migration of key metaphors and Wanderwörter across the Islamicate world, examining how terms rooted in Buddhist, Manichaean, and Brahmanical lifeworlds were reimagined in Persianate poetics and their Ottoman afterlives. Figures such as the Chinese Buddha-idol, the Sanskrit maṇḍala, and the Persian dīv illustrate a larger pattern: concrete referents from Inner Asia and India were divested of their original religio- philosophical associations and reconfigured within an expansive Islamic literary framework, often inverted in value or enriched with new semantic layers. At the centre of this study is the Persian nigār, or icon, traced from its pre-Islamic origins through its reincarnation in Turco- Persian verse as the “icon gallery of China,” to its subsumption into the language of philosophical Sufism in twentieth-century Ottoman Istanbul. By following such metaphors in motion, this article reveals an integrated literary world not passively syncretic but actively appropriative, in which poets and mystics adapted foreign imagery to new aesthetic, metaphysical, and political ends, underscoring the adaptability and versatility that so came to define Persianate poetics.

Keywords

References

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  5. ———. Manṭiq al-Ṭayr. Edited by Fāṭima Ṣanʿatī-nīyā and Kāmil Aḥmadnizhād. Zuwwār, 1993.
  6. ———. The Conference of the Birds. Translated by Dick Davis. Penguin Classics, 2011.
  7. Bādshāh, Muḥammad ibn Ghulām Muḥyī al-Dīn. Farhang-i Ānandrāj. Vol. 3. Nawal Kishore, 1892.
  8. Brāhman, Chandar Bhān. Chahār Chaman. Edited by Muḥammad Yūnus Jaʿfarī. Markaz-i Taḥqīqāt-i Fārsī-i Rāyzanī-yi Farhangī-i Jumhūrī-yi Islāmī-i Īrān, 2007.

Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

World Languages, Literature and Culture (Other), Literary Theory, Comparative and Transnational Literature, Literary Studies (Other)

Journal Section

Research Article

Authors

Zakir Hussein Gul * This is me
0009-0007-8281-5367
United States

Publication Date

October 23, 2025

Submission Date

August 1, 2025

Acceptance Date

September 26, 2025

Published in Issue

Year 2025 Number: 9

APA
Gul, Z. H. (2025). Wandering Metaphors, Woven Worlds: Icons, Buddha-Idols and Demon-Deities from Inner Asia and India to Ottoman Europe. Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, 9, 61-114. https://doi.org/10.64957/nesir.1803866
AMA
1.Gul ZH. Wandering Metaphors, Woven Worlds: Icons, Buddha-Idols and Demon-Deities from Inner Asia and India to Ottoman Europe. Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi. 2025;(9):61-114. doi:10.64957/nesir.1803866
Chicago
Gul, Zakir Hussein. 2025. “Wandering Metaphors, Woven Worlds: Icons, Buddha-Idols and Demon-Deities from Inner Asia and India to Ottoman Europe”. Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, nos. 9: 61-114. https://doi.org/10.64957/nesir.1803866.
EndNote
Gul ZH (October 1, 2025) Wandering Metaphors, Woven Worlds: Icons, Buddha-Idols and Demon-Deities from Inner Asia and India to Ottoman Europe. Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi 9 61–114.
IEEE
[1]Z. H. Gul, “Wandering Metaphors, Woven Worlds: Icons, Buddha-Idols and Demon-Deities from Inner Asia and India to Ottoman Europe”, Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, no. 9, pp. 61–114, Oct. 2025, doi: 10.64957/nesir.1803866.
ISNAD
Gul, Zakir Hussein. “Wandering Metaphors, Woven Worlds: Icons, Buddha-Idols and Demon-Deities from Inner Asia and India to Ottoman Europe”. Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi. 9 (October 1, 2025): 61-114. https://doi.org/10.64957/nesir.1803866.
JAMA
1.Gul ZH. Wandering Metaphors, Woven Worlds: Icons, Buddha-Idols and Demon-Deities from Inner Asia and India to Ottoman Europe. Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi. 2025;:61–114.
MLA
Gul, Zakir Hussein. “Wandering Metaphors, Woven Worlds: Icons, Buddha-Idols and Demon-Deities from Inner Asia and India to Ottoman Europe”. Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, no. 9, Oct. 2025, pp. 61-114, doi:10.64957/nesir.1803866.
Vancouver
1.Zakir Hussein Gul. Wandering Metaphors, Woven Worlds: Icons, Buddha-Idols and Demon-Deities from Inner Asia and India to Ottoman Europe. Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi. 2025 Oct. 1;(9):61-114. doi:10.64957/nesir.1803866

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