Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

This book explores how Ottoman Muslims and Christians understood the phenomenon of conversion to Islam from the 15th to the 17th centuries. The Ottomans ruled over a large non-Muslim population and conversion to Islam was a contentious subject for all communities, especially Muslims themselves. Ottoman Muslim and Christian authors sought to define the boundaries and membership of their communities while promoting their own religious and political agendas. Tijana Krstic argues that the production and circulation of narratives about conversion to Islam was central to the articulation of Ottoman imperial identity and Sunni Muslim orthodoxy in the long 16th century.

Placing the evolution of Ottoman attitudes toward conversion and converts in the broader context of Mediterranean-wide religious trends and the Ottoman rivalry with the Habsburgs and Safavids, Contested Conversions to Islam draws on a variety of sources, including first-person conversion narratives and Orthodox Christian neomartyologies, to reveal the interplay of individual, (inter)communal, local, and imperial initiatives that influenced the process of conversion.

Author: Tijana Krstic
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 07/01/2014
Pages: 264
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780804793322

About the Author
Tijana Krstic is Associate Professor in the Medieval Studies Department at Central European University in Budapest.