Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer

Early Modern Middle East, Ottoman Empire, Iran, Sunni-Shiite Divide, Sects and Sectarianism in the Middle East, Empire and Identity Formation in the Middle East

I am a specialist in Middle Eastern history with a focus on early modern Ottoman and Safavid Empires. The questions surrounding the Sunni-Shi‘ite conflict during the early modern period and its enmeshment with issues of political, religious, and fiscal legitimacy in inter-confessional and inter-imperial contact zones is at the core of my research interests. By examining the religiosities of early modern Ottoman Anatolia/Iraq and Safavid Iran, my research provides an accurate picture for a deeper understanding of both the religious transformation of the Ottoman and Safavid polities in the early modern era and the current geo-political and demographic make-up in the region today. My current book project, tentatively titled Politics of Sectarianism in the Early Modern Middle East: Ottoman Sunnism, Safavid Shiism, and the Qizilbash, explores the Sunni-Shiite divergence in the early modern period, not merely as a religiously derived, but as a meticulously carried out geo-political and fiscal battle that formed the base of the sectarian configuration in the region today.

Winner, 2017 Best Dissertation Award, Ohio Academy of History; Presidential Fellowship at Ohio State University, 2015-2016; Ruth Higgins Research Grant, 2015; Ohio State University, Department of History, Sydney N. Fisher Award, 2010; Bradley Foundation Grant, 2013-2014.

“’Those Heretics Gathering Secretly…:’ Qizilbash Rituals and Ceremonies according to Early Modern Ottoman Sources,”’ Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 6/1 (Spring 2019): 39-60.

“The Formation of Kızılbaş Communities in Anatolia and Ottoman Responses, 1450s-1630s.” International Journal of Turkish Studies Vol 20, Nos. 1&2 (2014): 21-48.

“The Origins of Alawites and the Alawite Capture of Power in Syria.” In Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, November 2013.

“One Word, Many Implications: The Term “Kızılbaş” in the Early Modern Ottoman Context,” in Beyond Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: New Perspectives on Ottoman Sunnism, Vefa Erginbaş (ed.), (forthcoming, Edinburg: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), 47-70.

“Neither Victim nor Accomplice: The Qizilbash as a Borderland Authority in the Early Modern Ottoman Realm,” in Rethinking “Sunnitization” in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-1700, Tijana Kristic and Derin Terzioğlu (eds.) (forthcoming, Leiden: Brill, forthcoming, June 2020).

“The Emergence of the Safavids as a Mystical Order and Their Subsequent Rise to Power in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in The Safavids, ed. Rudi Matthee, (forthcoming, London: Routledge, June 2020).