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About Me

I am an Associate Professor of Ottoman and Middle East history. My research centers on modern state-making, elite formation, property regimes, and intercommunal conflict and coexistence in Ottoman Kurdistan. My work stands at the junction of interconnected Ottoman, Kurdish, Armenian, and Turkish histories. I also write about the question of methodology in Kurdish Studies.

My first book,The Kurdish Nobility in the Ottoman Empire Loyalty, Autonomy and Privilege, narrates the rise and fall of Kurdish nobility in the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth century. Focusing on one noble Kurdish family based in the emirate of Palu, a fortressed town in Kurdistan, it provides the first systematic analysis of the Kurdish hereditary nobility.

I am currently working on a new book, tentatively titled State Formation, Frontier Administration, and Mining: The History of the Keban-Ergani Mines in the Ottoman Empire, 1720-1870 which examines the most significant mining area of the empire in the eighteenth century.

My publications also appeared in the Journal of Social History, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, New Perspectives on Turkey, and edited volumes.

I also serves as the book review editor of the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association.

Recent Publications

 

This book narrates the rise and fall of Kurdish nobility in the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth century. Focusing on one noble Kurdish family based in the emirate of Palu, a fortressed town in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire, it provides the first systematic analysis of the hereditary nobility.

“Can One Save the Voices of the Ordinary Kurds from the Enormous Condescension of Posterity? An Agenda for Social History in Kurdish Historical Writings.” In Ümit Kurt, & Ara Sarafian (Eds.), Armenians, Greeks, and Kurds: A People’s History of the Ottoman Empire. Fresno: Press at California State University, 2020.

“Counting the Population in an “Unruly” Land: Census-making as a Social Process in Ottoman Kurdistan, 1830-1850. “Journal of Social History. Journal of Social History, 53, 2020,  763–791.

“The Archive as a “Collective Project”. International Journal of Middle East History, 49(3), 529-533.

Recent Op-eds

The Discursive Power of Calls for Papers: Observations of an Ottoman-Kurdish Historian, Jadaliyya, April 5, 2019

Kurdish Studies in North America: Decolonizing a Field that Does Not Quite Exist, Yet? June 20. 2018

Media Coverage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2oS1dlne-k&t=3733s&ab_channel=%C4%B0smailBe%C5%9FikciVakf%C4%B1

Social Media

Country Focus

Expertise by Geography

Middle East

Expertise by Chronology

18th century, 19th century, Early Modern, Modern, 20th century

Expertise by Topic

Capitalism, Colonialism, Economic History, Labor, Local & Regional, Rural & Agrarian History