This paper will explore the ways in which various identificatory labels came to demarcate the boundaries of loyalty in seventeenth-century Ottoman Eastern Anatolia. Specifically labels referring to the Kurds in the Ottoman-Safavid borderland region were utilized by both imperial and regional actors in order to locate center-peripheral relations. This paper will specifically investigate an Ottoman-Turkish translation of the Sherefname from the seventeenth century by which a local Kurdish scribe, in his introduction to the translation, makes bold claims for the ethno-linguistic superiority of the Kurds and the Kurdish language while simultaneously providing additional local histories of the seventeenth century that depict the Kurds as the ever loyal imperial subjects. This text in conjunction with comparative Ottoman imperial viewpoints on the Kurds provides a fascinating look into the complex imperial and regional markers of loyalty and difference. Moreover, I argue that the rise of ethno-linguistic terminology during this period did not mark some prelude to national identities but rather demonstrates the complexity and nuances of self-fashioning along center-periphery relations in an early modern empire.

This paper traces the self-understanding and self-depiction of sixteenth-century Bosnians as gazis—march lords and holy warriors in the service of the expansion of Muslim territory—and the impact of this self-understanding on the integration of Bosnian elites into Ottoman society. It shows how sixteenth-century Bosnians, as the inhabitants of a frontier province in the Ottoman Empire, capitalized on the by then well-founded ethos that understood Ottoman expansionism in terms of gaza or holy war, and explains how this ethos played an important role in defining both their identity and their relationship with the imperial centre. By the late fifteenth century, when Bosnia was incorporated into the Ottoman realm, Ottomans had a rather established view of their ancestors as gazis who attacked and raided the frontier regions of the Byzantine Empire in the name of Islam. By this time, the Ottoman sultanate was no longer a frontier principality but a large empire, and its rulers were not frontier warriors but sedentary sultans. The inhabitants of Bosnia, as the Empire’s westernmost frontier, however, have embraced and came to embody the gazi ethos. The paper shows how the interplay between the Ottomans’ perceived past and Bosnian contemporary reality shaped, at least in part, the place of local Bosnian elites within the imperial system. The suggested analysis also sheds light on the more general question of the significance of the concept of gaza in Ottoman history. Contributing to the debate between scholars from Paul Wittek to Cemal Kafadar, it highlights the political significance of the concept in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Ottoman internal politics. Although the representation of thirteenth-century Ottomans as gazis is most likely a later overlay rather than an authentic expression of their identity, it is revealing that the same vocabulary was used by sixteenth-century chroniclers for the depiction of the early Ottomans and contemporary Bosnian frontier warriors. The paper examines the implications of this characterization not only in contemporary Ottoman ideology but also in shaping the relations between different segments of the ruling Ottoman elite of the time.

The first Safavid shah, Ismail I (r. 1501–1524), came to power in Iran with the military support of a set of Turkic tribes called the Qizilbash. After an initial period of conquest, Ismail set about regularizing Safavid rule by putting Persian urban notables in key administrative positions. Historians up to now have portrayed early Safavid politics as driven in large part by Qizilbash resentment of the role of Persians in the government. An example that historians give as evidence of Qizilbash resentment is the Safavids' Khurasan campaign of 1512. In response to Uzbek incursions, a Qizilbash force crossed the Amu Darya and drove toward Bukhara. Although the Safavid force consisted of Qizilbash amirs leading Turkic troops, the overall commander was Ismail's vakil, Najm-i Thani, who was a Persian notable rather than a Turk. At the fortress of Ghijduvan near Bukhara, the Qizilbash amirs strongly disagreed with the vakil over strategy and some of the amirs withdrew. The following day the Uzbeks soundly defeated the Safavids in battle and ended the offensive. According to the conventional interpretation, the Qizilbash resented being commanded by a Persian to such an extent that some of them preferred to abandon him to defeat rather than fight alongside him. In this paper I will argue against this interpretation of the Battle of Ghijduvan. Ismail had been appointing Persians to the office of vakil since 1508, without any other incident of insubordination being recorded. Moreover, dissension in the ranks at Ghijduvan can be explained by considering the strategic position facing the Safavids at that moment, without appealing to an assumption of ongoing ethnic tension. Several sixteenth-century chroniclers recount this expedition. The two earliest and most important, which I use as the basis of my study, were written during the reign of Shah Ismail: the Futuhat-i Shahi by Amini Haravi, and the Habib al-siyar by Khwandamir.