Thierry Vincent Zarcone

Thierry Vincent Zarcone

• Senior Researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific research (CNRS)
• Expert in the « Advisory Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief», of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE), Warsaw

  Thierry Vincent Zarcone
  Born	1958 Tunis
  Occupation	Associate Professor and Author

Biography

Thierry Zarcone was born in 1958 in Tunis. Professor Zarcone is a French historian, a research director and a lecturer. As a researcher, his scientific studies are mainly concentrated on both religious and intellectual history of Iran and Turkey.

A review of his books and numerous articles reveals that Islam and Islamic attitude in Turkey, Iran and partly East Asia have been the leading subject of his studies. Since Sufism is necessarily homed in Asia, the history of Sufism and shamanism in Turkey are among the outstanding subjects he has studied.

Educations

Habilitation:School of High Studies in Social Sciences

• Dissertation subject:  Secret and Secret Societies in Islam. Turkey, Iran, and Central Asia, 19th-20th Century. Freemasonry, Carbonarism, and Sufi Brotherhoods).

Ph.D.: University of Strasbourg. Department of Islamic Languages and Civilizations

• Rizâ Tevfîk or the Enlighted Sufism: Structures of Thinking and Reception of Western Ideas at the Time of the Second Turkish Constitutionnal Regime - 1908-1923

M.A:University of Aix-en-Provence; Faculty of Philosophy

Editing Collaborations

He has also had some collaborations in terms of editing journals, collections or series

• Journal of the History of Sufism, Jean Maisonneuve Edition, Paris.
• Cahiers d’Asie Centrale, Institut Français d’Etudes sur l’Asie centrale, Aixen-Provence/Tashkent
• Revue d’Etudes des Mondes Musulmans et Méditerranéens, AFEMAM, Aixen-Provence responsible with Ekrem Işın of the “Collection on Sufism”, Simurg Press,

Istanbu

• director for the series “Monde caucasien et tatar - Asie centrale et Haut Asia”, at the Edition Jean Maisonneuve, Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, Paris

Academic Positions Overseas

• Université of Kyoto (Japan), Graduated School of Asian and African Studies:

October 2005 to march 2006.

• University of Fribourg (Swizerland), Seminar of Scial Anthropology: June 2007.

Certificates and Honors

• Saintour Prize from the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences for his book Mystics, Philosophers and Freemasons in Islam
• Certificate: University of Aix-en-Provence: Faculty of Philosophy

Major works

• His thesis on Habilitation titled as Secret and Secret Societies in Islam.
• Shamanism and Islam: Sufism, Healing Rituals and Spirits ( Le chamanisme de Sibérie et d’Asie centrale)
• Sufi poets of the Bektachi brotherhood. Poems translated from Turkish followed by a study on Bektachism, Montélimar, Signatura
• Sufism. Mystical Way of Islam, Paris,
• Sufi Pilgrims from Central Asia and India in Jerusalem
• Turkey. From the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Ataturk (La Turquie moderne et l'Islam (ESSAIS))
• Modern Turkey and Islam
• Secret and Secret Societies in Islam. Turkey, Iran and Central Asia
• La Route du Jade, A Journey of 20 Centuries
• Bukhara Forbids it
• Mystics, Philosophers and Freemasons in Islam
• Le Croissant et le Compas; Islam et Franc-maçonnerie, de la fascination à la détestation

Interests

• Intellectual study of history of Islam in the Turko-persian area during 19th-20th Centuries;
• Sufism and Sufi lineages, Saint Cults in the Turko-persian area.

Major Trend

He believes iconography and calligraphy are the two forms of religious symbolism. In his opinion, though the image of lion is considered as a representation of Imam Ali in Shi’i zoomorphic, and is a religious, holy calligraphy suggested by Shi’i Sufi ideologies, they show us “a world but not the world itself”.