Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer

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.