#491 - Boundaries of Belonging in the Ottoman Empire: A Dialogue with Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer about belonging among various ethnic and religious groups in the early and middle Ottoman period. They discuss the landscape of religious and sectarian divides in the early Ottoman Empire, Turkic origins of the Safavids and Sufis, the Qizilbash, and various sociocultural variables. They talk about immigration between the Safavids and the Ottomans, the Safavid’s turn from Sufi to Shia, Qizilbash documents and Ottoman surveillance, remnants today, and many more topics. Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer is Assistant Professor of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies & Steering Committee Chair of the Ottoman Studies Initiative (OTS-NYU) at New York University. She has her PhD from The Ohio State University. She specializes in Middle Eastern history, with a focus on early modern Ottoman and Safavid Empires. She is the author of the book, Boundaries of Belonging: Sectarianism and Statecraft in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe