The Ottomans have conventionally been labeled staunch Sunnis. Indeed, considering the fetvās, or legal opinions, and treatises of Ottoman Şeyhülislams Ebu’s-Su‘ud (1490-1574) and Ibn Kemāl (1468/9-1534) denouncing various sects and beliefs that they considered outside the realm of ahl al-sunnah wa-al-jamā‘ah, and the religious persecution of the Qizilbash, it seems impossible to think otherwise. Ottoman Sunnism was defined for the most part by jurists, such as Ebu’s-Su‘ud and Ibn Kemāl, who were in the service of the Ottoman state, who naturally played a role in the justification of the Ottoman political position and in asserting Ottoman legitimacy vis-à-vis the Safavids. This juristic interpretation of Ottoman Sunnism has become the dominant explanation of Ottoman religious identity; however, it does not withstand serious scrutiny, first and foremost because of its limited application to the broader intellectual scene. Were, for example, Ottoman littérateurs and historians similarly staunch Sunnis? In this paper, I will attempt to define Ottoman Sunnism in a manner subtly different from that of the jurists by looking at the views of Ottoman historians on the issues that divided the original Muslim community, ultimately resulting in the schism between Sunnis and Shiites. These issues include the murder of the third caliph ‘Uthmān ibn Affān, in 656 C.E.; the conflict over the caliphate between ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭalīb and Mu‘āwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān; and the massacre of ‘Alī’s son Husayn by the forces of Mu‘āwiyah’s son Yazīd at Karbala in Iraq in 680. I argue that the example of the Ottoman historians shows that Ottoman Sunnism was far from being monolithic. Ottoman intellectuals, among them historians, circulated a broad spectrum of approaches on these subjects, ranging from intense identification with the family of the Prophet Muhammad, known as ahl al-bayt, including ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib and the line of Shiite imams descended from him, to zealous Sunnism. Intriguingly, the pendulum swung towards ahl al-baytism more frequently than it did toward fanatic Sunnism. The sources of the study include Ottoman Turkish and Arabic universal histories, literary and religious narratives and cover a wide range of historians, from the earliest representatives of Ottoman universal history-writers, such as Ahmedī (1334-1412), Enverī (d, 1460), and Şükrullah (1388-1461), to comparatively well-known later intellectual luminaries such as Mustafa ‘Ālī (1541-1600) and Katip Çelebi (1609-57), and lesser-known figures such as Mustafa Cenabī (d. 1590) and Muslihuddin Lārī (d. 1572).