| Summary: | This dissertation examines the Ottoman transition to a new mode of kingship in the first decades of the sixteenth century by examining the life and work of Idris Bidlisi (861-926/1457-1520), one of the most dynamic scholars and statesmen of the period. It situates Bidlisi's life within the context of the sweeping geo-political changes that precipitated the dissolution of the most powerful polities in Islamic lands and the emergence of the Ottomans as preeminent.
In his lifetime, Bidlisi resided or worked at three of the four major sultanates of the region: the Aqquyunlu of western and central Iran, the Ottomans of the Balkans and Anatolia, and the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria. While his itinerant career was somewhat emblematic of this period, his extensive professional and literary activities within these three courts offer a unique view to a political culture in crisis and the efforts of one of these powers, namely the Ottomans, to transcend the basic volatile power dynamics common to all late medieval Islamic polities. Through the composition of two major chronicles of the Ottoman dynasty in Persian, Hasht bihisht (The Eight Paradises) and the Salimshahnama (The Book of Sultan Selim), Bidlisi recorded his observations of the seminal events of his day and argued for a vision of rule undergirded by innovative discourses that emphasized the cosmic and sacral aspects of kingship.
By focusing on the life, historiographical outlook, and political thought of Bidlisi, the dissertation elucidates the delicate and often volatile political and patronage dynamic that existed between rulers and their retainers in late medieval Islamic lands and represented the primary challenge to forming centralized administrations. It describes the role of court patronage in the production of historical works and the significance of those works to ideological discourses of rule. Lastly, it traces the spread of a novel vocabulary of sovereignty from its fifteenth-century origins to its emergence as the ideological basis for empire across large parts of Asia in the sixteenth century.
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