Christopher Markiewicz, The Crisis of Kingship in Late Medieval Islam: Persian Emigres and the Making of Ottoman Sovereignty

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Crisis of Kingship in Late Medieval Islam: Persian Emigres and the Making of Ottoman Sovereignty by Christopher Markiewicz Ali Anooshahr Christopher Markiewicz, The Crisis of Kingship in Late Medieval Islam: Persian Emigres and the Making of Ottoman Sovereignty (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization.) New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019, Pp. xiii, 345. Cloth $120.00, e-book $96.00. ISBN: 9781108492140 Christopher Markiewicz seeks to investigate what he calls the new vocabulary of sovereignty involving cosmic and divine factors that supplemented earlier norms based on Islamic law and genealogy. He considers the fifteenth century crucial for this phenomenon, when such notions were developed and spread by specific individuals. He takes the historian and intellectual, Idris Bidlisi (d. 1520), as the subject of his study, because he “acted as both recipient and shaper of a political culture in flux in both the Aqquyunlu Sultanate…and the Ottoman Sultanate” (p. 20). Essentially, Markiewicz argues that while in the Ottoman Empire, Bidlisi incorporated in his writings ideas of kingship that had developed in Timurid Iran, and these in turn impacted Ottoman political culture. The book is made up of two parts, the first provides a biographical overview while the second discusses the intellectual contributions of Idris. Chapter one outlines Bidlisi’s early life, education, and experience in Iran during the Aqquyunlu period. Chapter two continues the narrative with Idris’ career in the Ottoman Empire where the author emigrated following the rise of the Safavids in Iran. Being rather disappointed in his hopes and aspirations, Idris subsequently tried his luck in more easterly regions during Sultan Selim’s activities in eastern Anatolia, Iran, Syria, and Egypt. Markiewicz covers this period in chapter three. Chapter four begins the discussion of particular political concepts, showing the new vocabulary of sovereignty applied to Timur, in particular the identification of the monarch as sahib qiran (lord of the Conjunctions) [End Page 361] and mujaddid (the renewer). Chapter five traces new historiographical developments in the same period, both in Iran and the Ottoman Empire. Finally, chapter six traces the formation of particularly Aqquyunlu notions of sovereignty in the period, khilafat-i rahmani (the vice-regency of God) and the ultimate coalescence of all three concepts in the Ottoman Empire especially during the reign of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (d. 1566). The Crisis of Kingship provides the first English-language monograph-length study of Idris Bidlisi and his times. It makes a number of important contributions by discovering and highlighting numerous biographical details, by placing Idris within his historical and intellectual context, by offering perceptive readings of scholars such as Jalal al-Din Davani (d. 1502), and by tracing the three particular concepts of kingship against the backdrop of political, religious, and philosophical developments of the period. The latter is particularly significant as chapter five provides a very thorough overview of the growing field of Persian historical writings in the fifteenth century, which can be read profitably alongside Markiewicz’s earlier and important article in the Journal of Early Modern history 21 (2017), pp 216–240. For all these the author must be commended. On the other hand, the book is open to criticism for a number of reasons. For one, Markiewicz does not engage sufficiently with Idris’s most important work, the monumental chronicle of the House of Osman the Hasht Bihisht. A thorough reading of this work and comparison with similar material in other Ottoman chronicles would really help situate Idris’s place in the Ottoman historical tradition and in turn indicate his overall outlook on sovereignty. For example, the material in the Hasht Bihisht often bears great similarity with the chronicle of Ruhi, itself reflecting trends at the court of Mehmed II that attempted to place the House of Osman specifically in the Roman Imperial tradition, going so far as to claim that the Ottomans were descendants of Esau (who was known to have had lighter features), and that they were meant to defend civilization against the Gog and the Magog (and Turks) as had Alexander the Great. This is significant because it shows how Markiewicz primarily sees “influence” as unidirectional thereby overemphasizing Idris’s impact on the Ottomans (and not the other...