Book talk: “Taming the Messiah: The Formation of an Ottoman Political Public Sphere, 1600-1700” by Aslihan Gurbuzel, CMES, Harvard University, October 3, 2023

In the history of the Ottoman Empire, the seventeenth century has often been considered an anomaly, characterized by political dissent and social conflict. In this book, Aslıhan Gürbüzel shows how the early modern period was, in fact, crucial to the formation of new kinds of political agency that challenged, negotiated with, and ultimately reshaped the Ottoman social order. Taming the Messiah offers a new method of studying public political life by focusing on the variety of religious visions and lifeworlds native to Ottoman society and the ways in which they were appropriated and repurposed in the pursuit of new forms of civic engagement.

Aslıhan Gürbüzel is an assistant professor of Ottoman history at the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies in Montreal. She completed her PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University in 2016. Her research and teaching interest include History of the Ottoman Empire, Islamic Political Thought, Religious Movements to 1800, and Manuscript Studies.

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