An Acem statesman in the Ottoman court: İdris-i Bidlîsî and the making of the Ottoman policy on Iran

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to explore key aspects of the religious and political rift that took place between the Ottoman lands and Safavi Iran in the early sixteenth century and the roles played by Kurdish notables in that process through a study of the life, the religio-political writings and diplomatic activities of İdris-i Bidlîsî (1450?-1520). A bureaucrat, a scholar, a historian as well as diplomat, Bidlîsî is examined in this studyprincipally as an enormously influential figure behind the Ottoman policies on itsimmediate eastern neighbors. Specifically, Chapter One, which is biographical in approach, discusses the formation of Bidlîsî as a learned man of western Iran and an Akkoyunlu bureaucrat, and the ways in which this formation aided and in some caseshampered his later career as a man of letters and a political strategist in the Ottoman court. Chapter Two, which may be considered the crux of this study, demonstrates how Bidlîsî̕s dual position as an envoy of Sultan Selim and as a Kurdish notable enabled himto forge an alliance between the Kurds in the western Safavi borderlands and the Ottoman state as well as to guarantee a special status for the Kurdish notables whose lands wereincorporated into the Ottoman realms. Focusing on Bidlîsî̕s religio-political writings, the last chapter analyzes his contributions to the attempts among the Ottoman ulema to formulate a sound basis for Ottoman legitimacy while delegitimating the Safavis asheretics. The sources utilized in this study comprise various published and unpublishedprimary sources, including Bidlisî̕s own writings such as the Kânûn-i Shahenshâhî, the epilogue to the Hasht Behesht and Selimshahnâme as well as other contemporary or near contemporary chronicles such as the Sharafnâme, and archival sources such as the cadastral registers of the newly conquered lands in the east and the letters of key politicalfigures involved in the Ottoman-Safavi conflict, including Bidlîsî̕s own letters in form of military reports.