L.I.S.A. Scientific Portal features the research of Professor Simeon Evstatiev from the Department of Arabic and Semitic Studies at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, where he is also Director of the Center for the Study of Religion, through a documentary sponsored by Gerda Henkel Foundation whose Fellow he currently is, including as an Associate at Leibnitz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin. The movie highlights some aspects of Simeon Evstatiev’s work within his ongoing study of Salafism in Islam. The main product will be the first history of Salafism which involves the Balkan context along with a set of topics from Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. Thus, though having a predominantly historical focus on Salafism as a religious orientation and a current in Islamic intellectual, religious and political history, the research entails also a socio-anthropological component – an ethnography of Salafism from which the historical study departs retrospectively to embrace a set of interrelated case studies.
Professor Evstatiev started his work on one of those cases – the 17th-century Qadizadeli movement – as a Fellow at the Advanced Academia Programme of the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia (2011–2012). Later, he expanded the scope of his research during his work in Istanbul and at Princeton University.
The film which provides both English and German audio is subdivided into 7 short episodes that can be watched here.