Oral Narrative Traditions and Performances in Islamicate Societies

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to the proposed Special Issue Oral Narrative Traditions and Performances in Islamicate Societies in the journal Religions. Across Islamicate societies, oral narration and performance have long constituted central modes of religious and cultural knowledge production. From Qurʾānic recitation and ḥadīth transmission to pre-Islamic poetry, epic storytelling, ritual drama, devotional music, and domestic narrative genres, oral and performative practices have shaped religious experience, ethical formation, and collective memory beyond textual canons and institutional frameworks (Dweirj 2023; Herzog 2011).

The scientific relevance of this field lies in its capacity to bridge religious studies with humanities and social science, including folklore studies, anthropology, ethnology, history, sociology, and performance and media studies. Oral narratives and performances do not merely convey religious content; they actively mediate belief, negotiate authority, and articulate identities across gendered, generational, and regional contexts. Practices such as Sufi storytelling, Shiʿi taʿziyeh, Alevi deyiş, minstrel (âşık) repertoires, shadow theatre (Karagöz), and women’s domestic storytelling traditions illustrate how Islamicate performances intersect with indigenous practices, local cosmologies, and written cultures, while remaining open to improvisation, reinterpretation, and change (Herzog 2011; Idrizi 2025; Oktay and Özdemir 2025).

The aim of this Special Issue is to examine oral narrative traditions and performances as dynamic forms of lived religion within Islamicate societies, historically and in the present. Fully aligned with the scope of Religions, this Special Issue foregrounds ritual practice, vernacular theology, embodiment, sound, and performance as key sites of religious meaning-making. Contributions may address transformations of transmission across time, including the impact of print, broadcast media, and digital platforms, as well as processes of nationalism, migration, diaspora, secularization, and heritage-making.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Sacred narrative and ritual performance: Sufi storytelling, Qurʾānic/ḥadīth recitation, and Shiʿi taʿziyeh passion plays.
• Folk and secular storytelling: folktales (e.g., Nasreddin anecdotes, the Turkic Dede Korkut epic), domestic tales such as the Palestinian hikāye (women’s stories), shadow theatre (Ottoman Karagöz puppets) akademija.uns.ac.rs, or minstrel (âşık) stories.
• Historical and contemporary change: transmission from premodern to modern media (print, radio, digital), diasporic networks, nationalism and cultural memory.
• Methodological and theoretical approaches: performance/orality theory, collective memory, gender and generation, secularization of ritual, and comparative studies.

We welcome historical, ethnographic, literary, and comparative contributions that focus on gendered aspects of narration and performance, individual creativity and learning, intergenerational transmission, youth cultures, and postcolonial and memory-based perspectives. By bringing together diverse case studies and methodologies, this Special Issue seeks to advance interdisciplinary debates on religion as a lived, performed, and socially embedded practice across Islamicate contexts.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200-300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors, Prof. Dr. Hande Birkalan-Gedik (birkalan-gedik@em.uni-frankfurt.de), and Dr. Erdogan Gedik (Erd.Gedik@em.uni-frankfurt.de) and CC the Assistant Editor, Margaret Liu (margaret.liu@mdpi.com) of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

A tentative timeline:

Deadline for abstract submission: 30 November 2026
Deadline for full manuscript submission: 31 March 2027

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References

• Dweirj, Lina. 2023. The Qur’an: An Oral Transmitted Tradition Forming Muslims’ Habitus. Religions 14: 1531.
• Herzog, Thomas. 2011. Orality and the Tradition of Arabic Epic Storytelling. In Medieval Oral Literature, edited by Karl Reichl, pp. 629–52. Berlin: de Gruyter.
• Idrizi, Besfort. 2025. Islamic Theatre: Traditions, Forms, Perspectives and Global Influence. Zbornik radova Akademije umetnosti 13: 161–75.
• Oktay, Zeynep and Ulaş Özdemir. 2025. Deyiş in Transmission: Alevi Poetry and Music as Religious Tradition. New Perspectives on Turkey 72 (First View): 1–20.

Prof. Dr. Hande Birkalan-Gedik
Dr. Erdoğan Gedik
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• oral tradition
• narratives and performances
• Islamicate societies
• folklore
• Sufism
• Alevism
• gender
• digital media