Welcome - Islamicate Empires, 1300-1700: The Ottomans and Safavids
HIST 3510 Islamicate Empires, 1300-1700: The Ottomans and Safavids
CREDIT HOURS: 3
Until the devastating Mongol invasions of the 13th century, the principal centers of Islamic power, culture, and thought had been based in Cairo and Baghdad. This course will examine the post-Mongol Islamic world, and how politics and religion were irrevocably changed with the annihilation of the Sunni Abbasid caliphate and the emergence of new power centers led by the Ottomans and the Safavids respectively in cities like Istanbul and Isfahan. Religious heterodoxy, combined with the power vacuum left by Chingiz Khan and his descendants, allowed for the emergence of a number of unique Turkmen states in Western Asia, the most famous being the Ottoman Turks of Anatolia and the Safavids of Iran. It is this period - the 16th century- which saw the emergence and ongoing confessionalization of western Asia between Sunnism and Shi'ism. While religious polemic and confessional, dynastic conflict dominated the narrative of 1500-1700, there was a fluorescence in poetry , art, architecture, literature and philosophy in the Ottoman and Safavids periods; moreover, there was significant cultural exchange between the Turkish and Persian spheres of Anatolia and Iran.
FORMAT:
CROSS-LISTING: COMR 3510.03,
HIST 5503.03,
RELS 3510.03