The Caliphate in the Age of Sultans: Idris-i Bidlisi's Portrayal of the Ottoman Caliph in the Early Sixteenth Century My paper examines Idris-i Bidlisi's (d. 1520) depiction of the Ottoman ruler as caliph in the early sixteenth century. As a leading jurist, a mystic and a statesman Bidlisi's writings had a profound effect on the formations of Ottoman notions of the caliphate. He wrote two works on rulership where he put forward his concept of the caliphate and two historical works where he depicted the Ottoman ruler as the embodiment of an ideal caliph he envisaged. To my finding, Bidlisi was the first Ottoman scholar to extensively deal with the question of the caliphate. Before him, the use of the caliph or the caliphate was mostly confined to rhetoric and sultanic titulature. By reworking the classical Sunni theory of the caliphate that better suited to the Abbasid ideals of rulership, he elaborated a kind of caliphate that both expressed and reflected the peculiar situation of the Ottoman ruler. He provided a juristic and theological foundation for the Ottoman Caliph by resolving the problems posed by the classical principles of caliphate. Thanks to his elaboration and influence, Ottoman rulers came to fully embrace the caliphate and stress Islamic notions of rulership while undermining Turkic and Iranian ideals. He thus paved the way for Ottoman rulers, who lacked most of what was required of the caliph by medieval scholars, to reinstitute the caliphate in the post-Abbasid world of sultans.