Bibliograph

Contested Conversions to Islam, Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

Type

Label

Contested Conversions to Islam, Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Contested Conversions to Islam

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Sub title

Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

Summary

This book explores how Ottoman Muslims and Christians understood the phenomenon of conversion to Islam from the 15th to the 17th centuries. The Ottomans ruled over a large non-Muslim population and conversion to Islam was a contentious subject for all communities, especially Muslims themselves. Ottoman Muslim and Christian authors sought to define the boundaries and membership of their communities while promoting their own religious and political agendas. Tijana Krstic argues that the production and circulation of narratives about conversion to Islam was central to the articulation of Ottoman imperial identity and Sunni Muslim "orthodoxy" in the long 16th century. Placing the evolution of Ottoman attitudes toward conversion and converts in the broader context of Mediterranean-wide religious trends and the Ottoman rivalry with the Habsburgs and Safavids, Contested Conversions to Islam draws on a variety of sources, including first-person conversion narratives and Orthodox Christian neomartyologies, to reveal the interplay of individual, (inter)communal, local, and imperial initiatives that influenced the process of conversion

Target audience

adult

Classification