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.

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study, 2020.

NYU Center for the Humanities Fellowship, 2020-2021.

Presidential Fellowship at Ohio State University, 2015-2016.

Ruth Higgins Research Grant, 2015.

Bradley Foundation Research Grant, 2013-2014.

Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Graduate Student Research Grant, 2013.

Sydney N. Fisher Award, Ohio State University, 2010.

“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, (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2021).

“Neither Victim nor Accomplice: The Qizilbash as a Borderland Actor in the Early Modern Ottoman Realm,” in Rethinking “Sunnitization” in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-1700, Tijana Kristic and Derin Terzioğlu (eds.) (Leiden: Brill, November 2020), 423-450.

“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.

“’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.

Politics of Sect and Sectarianism in the Middle East: Ottoman Sunnism, Safavid Shiism, and the Qizilbash (book manuscript in preparation)