Dr. Sara Nur Yıldız Arslan

Contact

Social Sciences Building room #Z31

+90 312 210 3174

asara@metu.edu.tr

Website

https://metu.academia.edu/SaraNurYildiz

Education

PhD University of Chicago, 2006

Areas of Research Interest

Intellectual, religious, cultural and political history of medieval Anatolia (Seljuk, Mongol, beylik periods) and the early modern Ottoman world;

History of Islamic and Ottoman medicine;

Christian-Muslim interaction in medieval Anatolia;

Trade and economy in the Black Sea region and the Mongol world (13^th-14^th centuries) and the greater Mediterranean

 

Courses

HIST 112        History of Turks II

HIST 113        Readings in History I

HIST 207        Ottoman Palaeolography & Diplomatics I 

HIST 510        Women’s Experience With Hierarchy & the State

 

Current Work in Progress

Mongol Rule in Seljuk Anatolia: the Politics of Conquest and History Writing, 1243-1282. Leiden and Boston: E.J. Brill, publication date 2024

 

Selected Publications

“A Strange Affliction from Abroad: The Ottoman Chief Imperial Physician’s (d. 1692) Treatise on the Polish Plait (Plica Polonica).” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 11, no. 1 (2023): 229-265.

“Baiju: Mongol Conqueror at the Crossfire of Dynastic Struggle.” In Michal Biran, Francesca Fiaschetti, and Jonathan Brack, eds. Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia: Generals, Merchants, and Intellectuals. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2020, 44-63.

 

“A Hanafi Law Manual in the Vernacular: Devletoğlu Yūsuf Balıḳesrī’s Turkish Verse Adaptation of the Hidāya-WiqāyaTextual Tradition for the Ottoman Sultan Murad II (827/1424).” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 80, no. 2 (2017): 283-304.

 

Islamic Literature and Intellectual Life in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-century Anatolia, co-edited with A.C.S. Peacock. Würzburg: Ergon, 2016.

 

 “Aydınid Court Literature and the Formation of an Islamic Identity in Fourteenth-century Western Anatolia.” In A.C.S. Peacock and S.N. Yıldız, eds. Islamic Literature and Intellectual Life in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-century Anatolia, 2016, 197-243.

 

 “Introduction: Literature, Language and History in Late Medieval Anatolia.” Co-written with A.C.S. Peacock. In A.C.S. Peacock and S.N. Yıldız, eds. Islamic Literature and Intellectual Life in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-century Anatolia, 2016, 19-45.

 

Islam and Christianity in Mediaeval Anatolia. co-edited with A.C.S. Peacock. Bruno de Nicola. Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2015.

 

“Battling Kufr (Unbelief) in the Land of Infidels: Gülşehrī’s Early Fourteenth-century Turkish Adaptation of ʿAṭṭār’sManṭiq al-ṭayr.” In A.C.S. Peacock, Bruno De Nicola, and Sara Nur Yıldız, eds. Islam and Christianity in Mediaeval Anatolia, 2015, 329-347.

 

“From Cairo to Ayasuluk: Hacı Paşa and the transmission of Islamic learning to western Anatolia in the late fourteenth century.” Journal of Islamic Studies 25, no. 3 (2014): 263-297.

 

The Seljuks of Anatolia. Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East, co-edited with A.C.S. Peacock. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013;  Paperback version, 2015; Turkish translation: Anadolu Selçukluları Ortaçağ Ortadoğusu’nda Saray ve Toplum, 2017.

 

 “A nadīm for the Sultan: Rāvandī and the Rūm Seljuks.” In A.C.S Peacock and Sara Nur Yıldız, eds. The Seljuks of Anatolia. Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East, 2013, 91-111.

 

“In the Proximity of Sultans: Majd al-Dīn Isḥāq, Ibn ‘Arabī and the Seljuk Court.” Co-authored with Haşim Şahin. In A.C.S Peacock and Sara Nur Yıldız, eds. The Seljuks of Anatolia. Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East, 2013,173-205.

 

“The rise and fall of a tyrant in Seljuk Anatolia: Saʿd al-Din Köpek’s reign of terror, 1237-8.” In Robert Hillenbrand, A.C.S. Peacock, and Firuza Abdullaeva, eds. Ferdowsi, the Mongols and the History of Iran. Art Literature and Culture From Early Islam to Qajar Persia. Studies in Honour of Charles Melville. London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 2013, 92-101.

 

“Ottoman historical writing in Persian, 1400-1600.” In Charles Melville, ed. A History of Persian Literature. Vol. 10, Persian Historiography. London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 2012, 436-502.

 

“Pastoral Polities in the Post-Mongol World: Contextualizing Eastern Anatolia within the Geographical and Political Dynamics of the Mongol Successor States in the Middle East.” In Deniz Beyazid and Simon Rettig, eds. At the Crossroads of Empires: 14^th and 15^th Century Anatolia. Paris and Istanbul: Institut Français d’Études Anatoliennes Georges-Dumezil and De Boccard, 2012, 27-48.

 

“Karamanoğlu Mehmed Bey: Medieval Anatolian warlord or Kemalist language reformer? Nationalist historiography, language politics and the celebration of the Language Festival in Karaman, Turkey, 1961-2008.” In Jorgen Nielsen, ed. Religion, ethnicity and contested nationhood in the former Ottoman space, 2012, 147-170.

 

“Manuel Komnenos Maurozomes and His Descendants at the Seljuk Court: The Formation of a Christian Seljuk-Komnenian Elite.” In Stefen Leder, ed. Crossroads between Latin Europe and the Near East: Corollaries of the Frankish Presence in the Eastern Mediterranean (12^th to 14th Centuries). Würzburg: Ergon, 2011, 55-77.

 

“Razing Gevele and Fortifying Konya: The Beginning of the Ottoman Conquest of the Karamanid Principality in South-Central Anatolia, 1468.” In A.C.S. Peacock, ed. Frontiers of the Ottoman World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 307-329.

 

“Reconceptualizing the Seljuk-Cilician Frontier: Armenians, Latins and Turks in Conflict and Alliance during the Early Thirteenth Century.” In Florin Curta, ed. Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis: Frontiers in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005, 91-120.