In the last quarter of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire had to deal with a variety of problems, including worldwide economic changes and multifaceted wars. The government was forced to dramatically change its strategy in order to maintain its hegemony. Centralization was one of the main devices that the empire used to cope with the changes of the period. As a result of centralization, faction struggles emerged in the Ottoman Palace. In order to maintain their power, ruling élite created new networks of political alliances throughout the empire, even including rebels, of the Celali (Jelali) revolt’s leaders. Karayazıcı (The Black Scribe, called Scrivano Nero in the Italian sources of the period) was a famous leader of a revolt of this kind in the years 1598-1602 who went into alliance with the palace. The goal of this paper is to analyze the impact of the Karayazıcı rebellions in political relations Particularly, I will shed new light on his relations with the Ottoman court, with the ruling élite and with foreign states on the evidence of the hitherto unexamined documents kept in the Venetian State Archives. These sources are reports of Venetian ambassadors, who informed the senate about Karayazıcı’s actions on a daily basis, official letters (dispacci), general reports (relazioni), and papers of the Council of Ten and the Bailo a Constantinopoli. They show how the Ottoman ruling élite secured their political and economic investments in Anatolia and how the dynasty attempted to use this rebellion as a pretext to subdue the people in the provinces. Furthermore, I will demonstrate how these revolts gave an opportunity to the dynasty to maintain its hegemony over.

The Qizilbash tradition was overwhelmingly transmitted through oral means. But Qizilbash religious texts known as Buyruks, written in Ottoman Turkish and found in national libraries, came to light in the aftermath of the so-called Alevi (modern name of Qizilbash) revival of late 1980s and 1990s. While these Buyruk manuscripts largely consist of a religious treatise entitled Menâkıb or Risâle, attributed to Shaykh Sâfi, they also contain shorter treatises as well as Qizilbash poetry/religious hymns. There are two dated copies of Buyruks from the early seventeenth century. Three undated copies are also extant in the libraries. Based on the Safavid genealogies they include, the two of these can reasonably be traced to the reigns of Shah Ali Abbas (r. 1642-1667) and Shah Suleiman (r. 1667-1694) respectively. Another undated copy is traced back to a time after 1601 based on the time period of the Qizilbash poet whose poems are included. Following the shared culture of manuscripts as a culture of open literacy, Buyruks experienced recurrent revisions as they passed through the hands of individual copyists, suggesting that these texts contributed to the process of reshaping Qizilbash discourses over time. In my paper, employing the methodologies of literary criticism and social history, I will trace the post-Safavid trajectory of the Qizilbash ritual and the concomitant development of the ritual space in the light of four Buyruk manuscripts. I propose to study available narratives in prose and poetry revolving around the forty assembly, which forms the backbone of the cem (lit. union) rituals today. I will also describe terminology and historical/hagiographic knowledge for the ritual and the ritual space in Buyruks. I anticipate shedding light on the possible reasons of the alterations, continuities and ruptures in these narratives, and inferring the parallel development of different Qizilbash discourses that emerge throughout these narratives. I believe, such a methodology will challenge the recent attempts from inside and outside the Alevi community to define and fix the Qizilbash/Alevi tradition by contributing to a better understanding of the history of the tradition.

This paper explores the complex and dynamic nature of infra-Islamic diplomacy in the early modern Mediterranean. Recent studies on early modern diplomacy by Christian Windler and Mathieu Grenet employ a socio-cultural framework to analyze Christian-Muslim relations. In doing so, their studies highlight the diplomat’s role in developing a ‘cross-culturalness’ that de-emphasizes religious markers and focuses on practice as opposed to perception. Though an important contribution to the field of early modern diplomacy, the Christian-Muslim framework fails to account for the complexities of diplomatic relations between Islamic governments. Thus, this paper intervenes in recent scholarship to demonstrate the relative importance of religious markers and varying cultural perceptions in infra-Islamic Mediterranean diplomacies. This paper examines two Moroccan ambassadors, Abū al-Qāsim al-Ziyyānī (d. 1833) and Ibn ʿUthmān al-Miknāsī (d. 1799), and their simultaneous journey to Istanbul in 1785 as a way to challenge the static category of ‘Islamic diplomacy’ that marks current studies. Working closely with their respective written accounts, I analyze why the two ambassadors transmitted such varying portrayals of the Ottoman Empire and the court in Istanbul. Though both traveled under the authority of Sidi Muḥammad Bin ʿAbdallāh (Moroccan Sultan, r. 1757-1789) each ambassador represented his mission and interaction with the court of Abdulhamid I (Ottoman Sultan r. 1774-1789) in an entirely different manner. A detailed analysis of the respective accounts reveals varying interpretations of Ottoman culture, diplomatic protocol, and manifestations of religious sovereignty. I argue that al-Ziyyānī’s and al-Miknāsī’s accounts employ varying degrees of Islamic rhetoric and cultural analogies to describe their missions to Istanbul. Through gradations of Islamic rhetoric and cultural equivalence, the accounts illustrate the mutability of such characteristics as ‘protocol,’ ceremony, and imperial sovereignty. Consequently, though ‘protocols’ and ‘ceremonies’ exist, they are supple and dependent on each diplomatic mission. For instance, recognition of non-Islamic, ‘foreign’ elements in Ottoman diplomatic protocol is either highlighted or ignored. I will further demonstrate how infra-Islamic solidarity is either amplified or diminished based on each ambassador’s conception of Islamic imperial geographies. In this way, an analysis of the ambassadors’ travelogues demonstrates the significance of religious markers and cultural perception in infra-Islamic diplomacy. Thus, by bringing into conversation diplomatic history, North African history, Ottoman history, and Islamic history we can begin to disentangle the static conception of early modern ‘Islamic diplomacy.’

Much ink has been spilled on the nostalgic and elegiac recollections of al-Andalus in pre-modern and modern Arabic and Islamic writings. Yet, very little has been written on the theme of nostalgia for al-Andalus in the rich corpus of early modern Moroccan Voyages en Espagne. By Voyages en Espagne I refer specifically to travel accounts written by Moroccan diplomats who visited Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; besides al-Ghassānī (d.1707), this includes travelers such as al-Ghazzāl (d.1777), al-Miknāssī (d. d.1791), and al-Zayyānī (d.1833). In my presentation, I argue that al-Ghassānī‘s Riḥlat al-wazīr fī iftikāk al-ʾasīr is infused with nostalgia for al-Andalus and this work of literature should be looked at as one of the foundational Post-Reconquista Arabic Andalusiyyāt. I do so by, firstly, exploring al-Ghassānī‘s predilection for historical digression on the early Muslim conquest of al-Andalus. Secondly, I discuss the author’s nostalgic/elegiac representation of what he fascinatingly calls “ʾāthār al-ḥaḍārah al-qadīmah” (the traces/ruins of the old civilization) in Andalusian towns, notably Cordoba and Toledo. Finally, I explore al-Ghassānī’s poetic anthologization of Andalusian landscapes, flora, and fauna as well as his recurring juxtaposition of al-Andalus’ Islamic past with its Spanish-Christian present. While a comprehensive exploration of modern theories of memory and nostalgia exceed the scope of my presentation, the writings of Pierre Nora and Alfredo González-Ruibal on sites of memory, as well as Svetlana Boym, and Fred Davis on nostalgia will inform my exploration of these themes in al-Ghassānī’s Riḥlat al-wazīr.