Contested Conversions to Islam

Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

Tijana Krstić

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780804793322, 9780804773171
• eBook ISBN: 9780804777858
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion, Politics & State

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 Krsti? 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Transliteration and Pronunciation
• Introduction Turning “Rumi”: Conversion to Islam, Fashioning of the Ottoman Imperial Ideology, and Interconfessional Relations in the Early Modern Mediterranean Context
• Chapter One Muslims through Narratives: Textual Repertoires of Fifteenth-Century Ottoman Islam and Formation of the Ottoman Interpretative Communities
• Chapter Two Toward an Ottoman Rumi Identity: The Polemical Arena of Syncretism and the Debate on the Place of Converts in Fifteenth-Century Ottoman Polity
• Chapter Three In Expectation of the Messiah: Interimperial Rivalry, Apocalypse, and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Muslim Polemical Narratives
• Chapter Four Illuminated by the Light of Islam and the Glory of the Ottoman Sultanate: Self-Narratives of Conversion to Islam in the Age of Confessionalization
• Chapter Five Between the Turban and the Papal Tiara: Orthodox Christian Neomartyrs and Their Impresarios in the Age of Confessionalization
• Chapter Six Everyday Communal Politics of Coexistence and Orthodox Christian Martyrdom: A Dialogue of Sources and Gender Regimes in the Age of Confessionalization
• Conclusion Conversion and Confessionalization in the Ottoman Empire: Considerations for Future Research
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index