AYŞE BALTACIOĞLU-BRAMMER

Committee Member

Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer is a specialist in Middle Eastern history with a focus on early modern Ottoman and Safavid Empires.  The questions surrounding the Sunni-Shi‘ite conflict during the early modern period and its enmeshment with issues of political, religious, and fiscal legitimacy in inter-confessional and inter-imperial contact zones is at the core of her research interests. Her current book project, tentatively titled Sect and Sectarianism in the Early Modern Middle East: Ottoman Sunnism, Safavid Shiism, and the Qizilbash, explores the Sunni-Shiite divergence in the early modern period, not merely as a religiously derived, but as a meticulously carried out geo-political and fiscal battle that formed the base of the sectarian conflict in the region.