AKADEMİDE KIZILBAŞLIK: WEB OF SCIENCE VE SCOPUS VERİTABANLARINDA BİR YAYIN HARİTASI
QIZILBASHISM IN ACADEMIA: A PUBLICATION MAPPING IN WEB OF SCIENCE AND SCOPUS DATABASES

Summary/Abstract: The term Kızılbaş was adopted and used as an internal designation by Alevi communities that gathered around the Ardabil Dervish Lodge beginning from the era of Sheikh Haydar. However, with the establishment of the Safavid State by the members of this lodge, Ottoman–Safavid rivalries became inevitable. As a result of this political context, the term came to be perceived by the Ottoman authorities as the name of the “other,” and its meaning and connotations were consequently distorted. Over time, this concept—originally carrying distinctive theological, political, and cultural significance—gradually lost its former prevalence, particularly within the Anatolian region. While in Ottoman documents the term generally bore negative and exclusionary meanings, in Safavid sources it was often employed as a privileged or honorific expression. Owing to its historical significance, the term Kızılbaş has attracted the attention of numerous modern scholars and has been examined extensively in academic research. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of articles published between 1991 and 2024 in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases, with the aim of identifying research trends and dynamics within the academic literature on the topic of Kızılbaşlık (Kizilbashism). A total of 86 academic publications were identified through searches using the keywords “kizilbash,” “qizilbash,” and “kizilbaslik.” The collected data were analyzed using the R programming language, and the findings were evaluated through various visualizations. The results indicate a steady increase over the years in the number of publications focusing on Kızılbaşlık; however, international academic collaborations in this field remain extremely limited. Turkey has produced the majority of the total publications, emerging as the dominant contributor to the research landscape. The journal Türk Kültürü ve Hacı Bektaş Velî Araştırma Dergisi (Journal of Turkish Culture and Hacı Bektaş Veli Research) has been identified as the most frequent publication venue. Citation analyses reveal that the overall academic impact of the field remains modest, with notable contributions coming from scholars such as Babayan and Bashir. In addition, the study examines factors such as publication types, patterns of author collaboration, keyword usage, and interdisciplinary contributions. The findings emphasize the need to enhance both conceptual consistency and methodological diversity in Kızılbaşlık research. Overall, this study contributes to an objective understanding of the current state of the literature and provides guidance for future interdisciplinary and internationally oriented research. In this respect, it aims to increase the academic visibility of Kızılbaşlık and to highlight the structural gaps that persist within the scholarly field.

• Details
• Contents