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Sara Nur Yildiz

Middle East Technical University, History, Faculty Member

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PhD, University of Chicago

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Bogazici University

McGill University

Lucia De Frenza

Università degli Studi di Bari

Mustakim Arıcı

Istanbul Medeniyet University

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Georgiana (Jo) Hedesan

University of Oxford

The University of Tokyo

Abdurrahman Atçıl

Sabancı University

Rutgers at Newark

Matthew Melvin-Koushki

University of South Carolina

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Books (Monographs) by Sara Nur Yildiz

Mongol Rule In Thirteenth-Century Seljuk Anatolia: The Politics of Conquest and History Writing, 1243-1282 (Brill, forthcoming)

Edited Volumes by Sara Nur Yildiz

Literature and Intellectual Life in 14th-15th Century Anatolia, co-edited with A.C.S. Peacock (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2016)

This collection of thirteen essays addresses the intellectual, religious and literary culture of ... more This collection of thirteen essays addresses the intellectual, religious and literary culture of medieval Anatolia and the early Ottoman realm of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, focusing on texts written in Arabic, Persian and Old Anatolian Turkish as case studies. The introductory chapter surveys the beylik (Turkish principalities) period and the emergence of Anatolian Turkish as a vernacular literary language in the fourteenth century. The subsequent chapters present a wide range of topics, ranging from proto-Bektashi poetry and the Vefa'iyye to the emergence of the Ottoman scholarly system. These scholarly essays aim not only to move beyond Köprülü’s nationalist paradigm of Anatolian cultural life with new approaches, but also to provide background for further research and point to new avenues of inquiry in this relatively neglected field of study.
The volume may be purchased through the Ergon Publisher's website: http://www.ergon-verlag.de/en/orientalistik/istanbuler-texte-und-studien/band-34.php

Islam and Christianity in Mediaeval Anatolia, co-edited with A.C.S. Peacock and Bruno de Nicola (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2015)

by Sara Nur Yildiz and Bruno De Nicola

Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East: The Seljuks of Anatolia, co-edited with A.C.S. Peacock (London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013)

Paperback Version: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East: The Seljuks of Anatolia, co-edited with A.C.S. Peacock (London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015)

Journal Articles (Refereed) by Sara Nur Yildiz

A Strange Affliction from Abroad: The Ottoman Chief Imperial Physician Ḥayātīzāde's Treatise on the Polish Plait (Plica Polonica

A Hanafi Law Manual in the Vernacular: Devletoğlu Yūsuf Balıḳesrī’s Turkish Verse Adaptation of the Hidāya-Wiqāya Textual Tradition for the Ottoman Sultan Murad II (827/1424), BSOAS (June 2017)

I examine Devletoğlu Yūsuf Balıḳesrī’s Hanafi law manual, a paraphrase of the Arabic Wiqāya compo... more I examine Devletoğlu Yūsuf Balıḳesrī’s Hanafi law manual, a paraphrase of the Arabic Wiqāya composed in rhymed couplets in Anatolian Turkish and dedicated to the Ottoman sultan Murad II (d. 855/1451). I discuss how the author shapes his text for an Ottoman audience and justifies the use of verse as well as the newly emerging literary language of Anatolian Turkish for the composition of a religious text. Not only does the author refer to the benefits of transmitting religious knowledge in the vernacular, but he also justifies its use for Islamic learning by citing Hanafi-approved Persian practices of religious devotion as well as the rhetorical theories of the Arabic grammarian, ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. ca. 471-474/1078-1081)

From Cairo to Ayasuluk: Hacı Paşa and the Transmission of Islamic Learning to Western Anatolia in the Late Fourteenth Century, Journal of Islamic Studies (2014)

Journal of Islamic Studies, Sep 2014

This article surveys the Anatolian physician and scholar Hacı Paşa’s (d. ca. 1425) career and wri... more This article surveys the Anatolian physician and scholar Hacı Paşa’s (d. ca. 1425) career and written corpus of twelve works (ten in Arabic and the remaining two in Old Anatolian Turkish), contextualizing this textual production in its broader intellectual trends and the intraregional scholarly networks. After completing his religious and medical studies in Cairo and working as physician at the Cairene Manṣūriyya hospital, Hacı Paşa resettled in western Anatolia in 1370 where he served the Aydınid ruler, Fakhr al-Dīn ʿİsā Bey (r. ca. 1360-ca. 1389-1391) as qadi, madrasa teacher, and court physician. The primary form of Hacı Paşa’s textual production was commentary writing: although the majority of his works were medical, Hacı Paşa also composed commentaries on kalām and logic. This article demonstrates how, by participation in textual communities clustering around certain authoritative texts through commentary writing, Hacı Paşa was linked to a vast interregional network of scholars, and in particular, to Cairene-centered textual communities promoting the combination of rational and religious sciences as it reached its culminating point in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth-century in Ilkhanate Iran. Hacı Paşa subsequently disseminated these intellectual trends in western Anatolia through teaching and writing while in the service of the Aydınid ruler.

Book Chapters by Sara Nur Yildiz

“Baiju: The Mongol Conqueror at the Crossfire of Dynastic Struggle"

In Michal Biran, Francesca Fiaschetti, and Jonathan Brack, eds. Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia: Generals, Merchants, and Intellectuals. University of California Press, 2020

Baiju’s career encapsulates the tensions arising between the military and the administration duri... more Baiju’s career encapsulates the tensions arising between the military and the administration during the rapid expansion of the Mongol imperial domains. The ad hoc predatory behavior of military commanders often clashed with the aims of Mongol civilian administrators in charge of implementing bureaucratic rule over subjugated sedentary populations and restoring sedentary agricultural lands and cities following the initial trauma of conquest often through violent means. Baiju was the rapacious and implacable Mongol commander par excellence, hated and feared by local populations, Christian or Muslim, implementing the Mongol military strategy of terror as an effective way to subjugate sedentary populations. Baiju is primarily known as the conqueror of Anatolia. In 1243 he rendered the Seljuks of Anatolia, the Cilician kingdom of Armenia, and Mosul under the rule of Sultan Badr al-Dīn Luʾluʾ (r. 1233-59) as tributary states, and in 1256 he placed Seljuk Anatolia under Hülegü’s direct authority with a second military campaign. In addition to being the twice-conqueror of Anatolia, Baiju likewise conducted raids and campaigns throughout neighboring regions, going as far as Baghdad. Together with his superior, the first Mongol commander-in-chief of the western territories, Chormaqan, Baiju was largely responsible for imposing Mongol rule in the western regions of the empire.

Aydınid Court Literature in the Formation of an Islamic Identity in Fourteenth-Century Western Anatolia (2016)

"Introduction: Literature, Language and History in Late Medieval Anatolia" in Islamic Literature and Intellectual Life in Fourteenth-and Fifteenth-Century Anatolia (2016)

by Sara Nur Yildiz and Andrew Peacock

Introduction to "Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia"

by Bruno De Nicola and Sara Nur Yildiz

“Battling Kufr (Unbelief) in the Land of Infidels: Gülşehrī’s Early Fourteenth-century Turkish Adaptation of ‘Aṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr (2015)

In Islam and Christianity in Mediaeval Anatolia, edited by A.C.S. Peacock, Bruno de Nicola, and Sara Nur Yıldız. Surrey: Ashgate, 2015

“A nadīm for the Sultan: Rāvandī and the Rūm Seljuks" (2013)

"In the Proximity of Sultans: Majd al-Dīn Isḥāq, Ibn ʿArabī and the Seljuk court" (2013)

“The Rise and Fall of a Tyrant in Seljuk Anatolia: Sa‘d al-Din Köpek’s reign of terror, 1237-1238" (2013)

"Ottoman historical writing in Persian, 1400-1600" (2012)

"Manuel Komnenos Mavrozomes and His Descendants at the Seljuk Court: the Formation of a Christian Seljuk-Komnenian Elite" (2011)

"Reconceptualizing the Seljuk-Cilician Frontier: Armenians, Latins and Turks in Conflict and Alliance during the Early Thirteenth Century" (2005)

Reconceptualizing the Seljuk-Cilician Frontier (Front Matter-Bibliographical Information)

Mongol Rule In Thirteenth-Century Seljuk Anatolia: The Politics of Conquest and History Writing, 1243-1282 (Brill, forthcoming)

Literature and Intellectual Life in 14th-15th Century Anatolia, co-edited with A.C.S. Peacock (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2016)

This collection of thirteen essays addresses the intellectual, religious and literary culture of ... more This collection of thirteen essays addresses the intellectual, religious and literary culture of medieval Anatolia and the early Ottoman realm of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, focusing on texts written in Arabic, Persian and Old Anatolian Turkish as case studies. The introductory chapter surveys the beylik (Turkish principalities) period and the emergence of Anatolian Turkish as a vernacular literary language in the fourteenth century. The subsequent chapters present a wide range of topics, ranging from proto-Bektashi poetry and the Vefa'iyye to the emergence of the Ottoman scholarly system. These scholarly essays aim not only to move beyond Köprülü’s nationalist paradigm of Anatolian cultural life with new approaches, but also to provide background for further research and point to new avenues of inquiry in this relatively neglected field of study.
The volume may be purchased through the Ergon Publisher's website: http://www.ergon-verlag.de/en/orientalistik/istanbuler-texte-und-studien/band-34.php

Islam and Christianity in Mediaeval Anatolia, co-edited with A.C.S. Peacock and Bruno de Nicola (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2015)

by Sara Nur Yildiz and Bruno De Nicola

Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East: The Seljuks of Anatolia, co-edited with A.C.S. Peacock (London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013)

Paperback Version: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East: The Seljuks of Anatolia, co-edited with A.C.S. Peacock (London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015)

A Strange Affliction from Abroad: The Ottoman Chief Imperial Physician Ḥayātīzāde's Treatise on the Polish Plait (Plica Polonica

A Hanafi Law Manual in the Vernacular: Devletoğlu Yūsuf Balıḳesrī’s Turkish Verse Adaptation of the Hidāya-Wiqāya Textual Tradition for the Ottoman Sultan Murad II (827/1424), BSOAS (June 2017)

I examine Devletoğlu Yūsuf Balıḳesrī’s Hanafi law manual, a paraphrase of the Arabic Wiqāya compo... more I examine Devletoğlu Yūsuf Balıḳesrī’s Hanafi law manual, a paraphrase of the Arabic Wiqāya composed in rhymed couplets in Anatolian Turkish and dedicated to the Ottoman sultan Murad II (d. 855/1451). I discuss how the author shapes his text for an Ottoman audience and justifies the use of verse as well as the newly emerging literary language of Anatolian Turkish for the composition of a religious text. Not only does the author refer to the benefits of transmitting religious knowledge in the vernacular, but he also justifies its use for Islamic learning by citing Hanafi-approved Persian practices of religious devotion as well as the rhetorical theories of the Arabic grammarian, ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. ca. 471-474/1078-1081)

From Cairo to Ayasuluk: Hacı Paşa and the Transmission of Islamic Learning to Western Anatolia in the Late Fourteenth Century, Journal of Islamic Studies (2014)

Journal of Islamic Studies, Sep 2014

This article surveys the Anatolian physician and scholar Hacı Paşa’s (d. ca. 1425) career and wri... more This article surveys the Anatolian physician and scholar Hacı Paşa’s (d. ca. 1425) career and written corpus of twelve works (ten in Arabic and the remaining two in Old Anatolian Turkish), contextualizing this textual production in its broader intellectual trends and the intraregional scholarly networks. After completing his religious and medical studies in Cairo and working as physician at the Cairene Manṣūriyya hospital, Hacı Paşa resettled in western Anatolia in 1370 where he served the Aydınid ruler, Fakhr al-Dīn ʿİsā Bey (r. ca. 1360-ca. 1389-1391) as qadi, madrasa teacher, and court physician. The primary form of Hacı Paşa’s textual production was commentary writing: although the majority of his works were medical, Hacı Paşa also composed commentaries on kalām and logic. This article demonstrates how, by participation in textual communities clustering around certain authoritative texts through commentary writing, Hacı Paşa was linked to a vast interregional network of scholars, and in particular, to Cairene-centered textual communities promoting the combination of rational and religious sciences as it reached its culminating point in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth-century in Ilkhanate Iran. Hacı Paşa subsequently disseminated these intellectual trends in western Anatolia through teaching and writing while in the service of the Aydınid ruler.

“Baiju: The Mongol Conqueror at the Crossfire of Dynastic Struggle"

In Michal Biran, Francesca Fiaschetti, and Jonathan Brack, eds. Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia: Generals, Merchants, and Intellectuals. University of California Press, 2020

Baiju’s career encapsulates the tensions arising between the military and the administration duri... more Baiju’s career encapsulates the tensions arising between the military and the administration during the rapid expansion of the Mongol imperial domains. The ad hoc predatory behavior of military commanders often clashed with the aims of Mongol civilian administrators in charge of implementing bureaucratic rule over subjugated sedentary populations and restoring sedentary agricultural lands and cities following the initial trauma of conquest often through violent means. Baiju was the rapacious and implacable Mongol commander par excellence, hated and feared by local populations, Christian or Muslim, implementing the Mongol military strategy of terror as an effective way to subjugate sedentary populations. Baiju is primarily known as the conqueror of Anatolia. In 1243 he rendered the Seljuks of Anatolia, the Cilician kingdom of Armenia, and Mosul under the rule of Sultan Badr al-Dīn Luʾluʾ (r. 1233-59) as tributary states, and in 1256 he placed Seljuk Anatolia under Hülegü’s direct authority with a second military campaign. In addition to being the twice-conqueror of Anatolia, Baiju likewise conducted raids and campaigns throughout neighboring regions, going as far as Baghdad. Together with his superior, the first Mongol commander-in-chief of the western territories, Chormaqan, Baiju was largely responsible for imposing Mongol rule in the western regions of the empire.

Aydınid Court Literature in the Formation of an Islamic Identity in Fourteenth-Century Western Anatolia (2016)

"Introduction: Literature, Language and History in Late Medieval Anatolia" in Islamic Literature and Intellectual Life in Fourteenth-and Fifteenth-Century Anatolia (2016)

by Sara Nur Yildiz and Andrew Peacock

Introduction to "Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia"

by Bruno De Nicola and Sara Nur Yildiz

“Battling Kufr (Unbelief) in the Land of Infidels: Gülşehrī’s Early Fourteenth-century Turkish Adaptation of ‘Aṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr (2015)

In Islam and Christianity in Mediaeval Anatolia, edited by A.C.S. Peacock, Bruno de Nicola, and Sara Nur Yıldız. Surrey: Ashgate, 2015

“A nadīm for the Sultan: Rāvandī and the Rūm Seljuks" (2013)

"In the Proximity of Sultans: Majd al-Dīn Isḥāq, Ibn ʿArabī and the Seljuk court" (2013)

“The Rise and Fall of a Tyrant in Seljuk Anatolia: Sa‘d al-Din Köpek’s reign of terror, 1237-1238" (2013)

"Ottoman historical writing in Persian, 1400-1600" (2012)

"Manuel Komnenos Mavrozomes and His Descendants at the Seljuk Court: the Formation of a Christian Seljuk-Komnenian Elite" (2011)

"Reconceptualizing the Seljuk-Cilician Frontier: Armenians, Latins and Turks in Conflict and Alliance during the Early Thirteenth Century" (2005)

Reconceptualizing the Seljuk-Cilician Frontier (Front Matter-Bibliographical Information)

"Razing Gevele and Fortifying Konya: the Beginning of the Ottoman Conquest of the Karamanid Principality in South-Central Anatolia, 1468" (2009)

Post-Mongol Pastoral Polities in Eastern Anatolia During the Late Middle Ages (2012)

“Karamanoğlu Mehmed Bey: Medieval Anatolian warlord or Kemalist language reformer? Nationalist historiography, language politics and the celebration of the Language Festival in Karaman, Turkey, 1961-2008” (2012)

“Historiography. xi. Persian Historiography in the Ottoman Empire.”

Islam and Christianity in Mediaeval Anatolia

by Bruno De Nicola, Andrew Peacock, and Sara Nur Yildiz

Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia offers a comparative approach to understanding the sp... more Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia offers a comparative approach to understanding the spread of Islam and Muslim culture in medieval Anatolia. It aims to reassess work in the field since the 1971 classic by Speros Vryonis, The Decline of Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization which treats the process of transformation from a Byzantinist perspective. Since then, research has offered insights into individual aspects of Christian-Muslim relations, but no overview has appeared. Moreover, very few scholars of Islamic studies have examined the problem, meaning evidence in Arabic, Persian and Turkish has been somewhat neglected at the expense of Christian sources, and too little attention has been given to material culture.

The essays in this volume examine the interaction between Christianity and Islam in medieval Anatolia through three distinct angles, opening with a substantial introduction by the editors to explain both the research background and the historical problem, making the work accessible to scholars from other fields. The first group of essays examines the Christian experience of living under Muslim rule, comparing their experiences in several of the major Islamic states of Anatolia between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, especially the Seljuks and the Ottomans. The second set of essays examines encounters between Christianity and Islam in art and intellectual life. They highlight the ways in which some traditions were shared across confessional divides, suggesting the existence of a common artistic and hence cultural vocabulary. The final section focusses on the process of Islamisation, above all as seen from the Arabic, Persian and Turkish textual evidence with special attention to the role of Sufism.

Ilkhanid Peripheries, Provinces and Dependencies, March 12 2021 1430

by Michal Biran, Yoni Brack, and Sara Nur Yildiz

Mongol Zoominar Presents: Ilkhanid Peripheries, Provinces and Dependencies Zara Pogossian (Uni... more Mongol Zoominar Presents:

Ilkhanid Peripheries, Provinces and Dependencies
Zara Pogossian (University of Florence), Sara Nur Yildiz (Berlin), and Edith Chen (Princeton and HU).
Moderator: Jonathan Brack (BGU)

Friday, March 12th, 14:30 (Israel time).

For details and link, please contact Jonathan Brack( [email protected]) or Wonhee Cho ([email protected])

The Mongol Zoominar, organized by Michal Biran (HUJI), Jonathan Brack (BGU) and Wonhee Cho (Academy of Korean Studies) and operating since April 2020 aims to bring together scholars from around the world who are interested in the Mongol Empire in an informal, informative, and friendly setting. We discuss work-in-progress, topics of common interest, and new directions in the field. Hosted and supported by the Louis Frieberg Center for East Asia Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Zoominar meets on zoom once a month, on Fridays afternoon (Israeli time)

The Zoominar welcomes new participants and presenters. If you would like to join our meeting (and future ones) and/or present a paper, please email [email protected] or [email protected].
Your email should include a brief introduction and the reasons for your interest in joining.

02.10.08, Stewart, Armenian Kingdom and the Mamluks

The Medieval Review, Oct 1, 2002

A.C.S. Peacock & S.N. Yildiz, eds, The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (2013), reviewed by Alexander Beihammer (BSOAS)

by Sara Nur Yildiz and Andrew Peacock

A.C.S. Peacock & S.N. Yildiz, eds, The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (2013), reviewed by George Lane (JRAS)

by Sara Nur Yildiz and Andrew Peacock

A.C.S. Peacock & S.N. Yildiz, eds, The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (2013), reviewed by Rudi Paul Lindner (Bustan: Middle East Book Review)

by Sara Nur Yildiz and Andrew Peacock

A.C.S. Peacock & S.N. Yildiz, eds, The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (2013), reviewed by George Malagaris (Journal of Islamic Studies)

by Sara Nur Yildiz and Andrew Peacock

A.C.S. Peacock & S.N. Yildiz, eds, The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (2013), reviewed by Konrad Hirschler (Medieval Journal, pp. 178-180)

by Sara Nur Yildiz and Andrew Peacock

Empires of Faith is the first volume of a new 'oxford History of Medieval Europe' series. Unlike ... more Empires of Faith is the first volume of a new 'oxford History of Medieval Europe' series. Unlike most recent surveys of the post-Roman period it is the work of a scholar who is primarily a Byzantinist, and one who has contributed notably to our understanding of the economy of the Age of Justinian — an aspect of the period which is richly emphasized in the current book. The importance of the economy, and of the related structures of society, in both the eastern and western Mediterranean, is finely underlined. It would be difficult to find a clearer or more persuasive account of the aristocracy, its wealth and malign influence (especially on Byzantine policy), on the one hand, or of the peasantry and its travails on the other. As a guide to such issues, Sarris is expert (though it is surprising to find here the idea that the precaria may originally have been ecclesiastical (p. 330): they are well established in Roman law). Given Sarris's distinction as a Byzantinist, it is not surprising that Empires of Faith is especially strong on the history of the eastern Mediterranean and beyond. In particular, there is a keen sense of the contemporary importance of Persia and of the nomadic peoples of the Steppes, as well as the Arabs. on these topics Sarris not only draws on his own work, but also on the work of James Howard-Johnston, which has been appearing since the 1970s, but most significantly in the last decade. The title of the book also points to one of its other great strengths: it places firm emphasis on the Church, particularly on the problems caused by doctrinal division. It does an excellent job in explaining the significance of the Church councils, not just their doctrine, but also their social and political importance. Nor are religions other than Christianity neglected: the significance of both Zoroastrianism and Islam is well established. From all these various perspectives, Empires of Faith is a distinctive and welcome addition to recent surveys of Late Antiquity. It is distinctive not just for what it emphasizes, but also for what it downplays. Some of the big debates that have consumed Western early medievalists are passed over with little comment: one would scarcely guess that a great deal of ink has been spilt over the nature of the barbarian settlement, or indeed over the formation of the Germanic peoples (their 'ethnogenesis'). Sarris takes a clear and reasonable stance over both issues, without signalling how contentious they have

A.C.S. Peacock & S.N. Yildiz, eds, The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (2013), reviewed by C.E. Bosworth (American Historical Review).pdf

by Sara Nur Yildiz and Andrew Peacock

A.C.S. Peacock & S.N. Yildiz, eds, The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East [Paperback] (2015) reviewed by Jürgen Paul (Bulletin critique des Annales islamologiques).pdf

by Sara Nur Yildiz and Andrew Peacock