Acar, Tuğrul

Harvard University

Research Title: Venerating the Saint and Building Community: The Shrine of Rumi and Mevlevi Socio-Religious Spaces in Anatolia (1300–1500)

Mr. Acar is a PhD candidate in Harvard University’s joint program in Middle Eastern Studies and History of Art and Architecture since 2018. He holds a BA in history from Boğaziçi University, and an MA in art history from the University of Texas, Austin. He worked as a research assistant for a museum project in Turkey and participated in fieldwork in Turkey and Egypt. His work focuses on Islamic art and architecture during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. His dissertation project—tentatively titled, “The Shrine of Rumi and Mevlevi Socio-Religious Spaces in Anatolia (1270–1506)”investigates networks of patronage, pilgrimage practices to shrines, and their phenomenological dimensions. He is dedicating his fellowship period at ANAMED to carrying out dissertation research in archives, museum collections, and historical sites. Among his interests are Islamic aesthetic perceptions of marble and spolia materials and the sociocultural agency of Sufi complexes and madrasas in late medieval Anatolia and the early Ottoman world.