The crisis of kingship in late medieval Islam : Persian emigres and the making of Ottoman sovereignty /

This book addresses a classic problem of Ottoman political history--legitimacy and the rhetoric of state power at the turn of the 16th century--from the unusual and rewarding direction of biography. The bulk of the study is an account of the life of Idris Bidlisi (1452--1520), a Persian scholar who began his career in the Aqquyunlu Sultanate of Iran before travelling, in the wake of the dissolution of that polity, to the Ottoman Sultanate. Bidlisi's experience, Markiewicz (Univ. of Birmingham, UK) suggests, represents a wide intermingling of poets, Sufis, scientists, and statesmen at the time that produced a powerful new discourse of royal power and divine favor in contemporary Muslim courts. Though the study is an important contribution to work on 15th- through 17th-century Ottoman political theory, readers should be aware that the book's subtitle is misleading. Markiewicz concerns himself not with sovereignty but with legitimacy. In addition, although the discussion of Bidlisi is meticulous and sensitive, the author makes little sustained attempt to generalize from it a relationship between late medieval emigration and Muslim political authority writ large. This is an old-school monograph in the of best ways; it is extremely focused and necessary reading for experts in the field. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. --Ruth Austin Miller, emerita, University of Massachusetts Boston