Hüseyin Ongan Arslan (Indiana University)

Reconstructing Sunni-Shiite Identities: Uses of the Muslim Past in Ottoman Historiography, 1496-1639

The PhD project focuses on Ottoman historiography with a special emphasis on the construction of the early Islamic history from the late 15th century to the first half of the 17th century. By principally working on the chronicles, produced in Ottoman Turkish, Persian and Arabic, Hüseyin Arslan will investigate how the early modern Ottomans constructed and articulated the Islamic history in accordance with their personal, communal and imperial agendas. Even though the recent studies shed light on the momentous change in politics, political discourse, and state building in the early modern Ottoman world, particular ways of legitimizing the rule and establishing a “pro-Sunni” and an “anti-Shiite” religious and intellectual frontier that led to the crystallizing of Sunni and Shiite identities are still to be studied in depth. The research brings to the fore the Ottoman literati understanding of Islam to not only reveal how they constructed their “Sunni” identity in an ongoing negotiation with a newly emerging “Shiite” discourse, but also discuss the evaluation of the rhetoric through their religious narratives, and its effects on the Qizilbash subjects. By mainly using the Ottoman chronicles on how the Ottomans constructed the early Islamic history, articulated the Sunni identity and identified Shiites, this research will contribute new insights on comparative religious history in particular and on early modern history in general.