Religious and Sociocultural Dimensions of the Kazalbashi Community in Bulgaria
Religious and Sociocultural Dimensions of the Kazalbashi Community in Bulgaria

Summary/Abstract: In the paper the Kazalbash community is regarded to be an ethnoreligous community pertaining to the Shiite division of Islam. Its native language is Turkish. The religious cread represents a message addressed to the community. The basic tenets of the doctrine are analyzed and compared to the Sunni confession. The organization of the Kazalbash religious community (the jam) is briefly described. The discussion is based on the conception that consciousness (in the case religious consciousness) is an ontolocical component of social reality. Both the holiday and the everyday dimension of Kazalbash social life are closely connected to their religious doctrine. For this reason the religious and sociocultural dimensions of the community interpenetrate to form a syncretic whole. What is more, the holiday and everyday life provide the specific characteristics of the culture. Hence the definition of the characteristics of the Kazalbash community's sociocultural model is possible only in the context of the knowledge of the principles and presciptions of the religious doctrine that determines the structure of this community.

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