Nur Yalman

Nur Yalman is a leading social anthropologist and professor at Harvard University.

Yalman received his B.A. from Robert College, Istanbul, one of Turkey’s premier colleges. His graduate work was done at Cambridge University, where he was a Bye-Fellow of Peterhouse, and subsequently joined the anthropology faculty at the University of Chicago. He then joined the Harvard University faculty in 1972, and is currently Professor of Social Anthropology and of Middle Eastern Studies. Although his first book, Under the Bo Tree, was on Sri Lankan kinship and marriage, he has since expanded his research to include religion and politics in Middle Eastern and Muslim cultures. Not only has he written about many countries of the world, he has also conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Sri Lanka, India, Iran and Turkey. Yalman’s varied research interests are expressed in the wide number of languages he speaks: Turkish, English, French, German, some Persian, Sinhalese, Italian and Arabic. [1]

Published Works

• Under the Bo Tree: Studies in Caste, Kinship, and Marriage in the Interior of Ceylon. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1967.
• "On the Purity of Women in the Castes of Ceylon and Malabar," The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 93, No. 1 (Jan., 1963), pp. 25-58
• "Land Disputes in Eastern Turkey"
• "De Tocqueville in India: An Essay on the Caste System," Man, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), pp. 123-131
• "The Structure of Sinhalese Healing Rituals," The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 23, Aspects of Religion in South Asia (Jun., 1964), pp. 115-150