Yildiz_CV_Feb 2012 OII website - Orient-Institut Istanbul

Sara Nur Yıldız
Curriculum Vitae
Orient-Institut Istanbul Türkgücü Caddesi,
Susan Sokak 16-18 D.8 Borazan Sok., No. 19/1
Cihangir 34433 Beyoğlu Firuzağa Mah., Beyoğlu
Istanbul, Turkey Istanbul, Turkey
Tel. +90 (212) 293 6067 ext. 120 saranuryildiz@gmail.com
Nationality: dual citizenship of the USA and the Republic of Turkey
FIELDS OF INTEREST
Medieval Islamic and Turco-Iranian world, Mongol world empire
Seljuk, Mongol, post-Mongol, and Ottoman Anatolia (1200-1500)
Comparative empire, frontier, and political culture
Religious and intellectual history of Seljuk and Mongol Anatolia
Medieval Persian and Ottoman Turkish historical writing
CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECT
“Historicizing the Religious and Intellectual Landscape of Seljuk and Mongol Anatolia”
PRESENT POSITION
2011 Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin (Research Associate), Orient-Institut Istanbul
EDUCATION
2006 Dec. Ph.D., Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Islamics), University of
Chicago
Dissertation: “Mongol Rule in Thirteenth-Century Seljuk Anatolia: the Politics of
Conquest and History Writing, 1243-1282”
Committee: John Woods (advisor), Cornell Fleischer, Robert Dankoff
1997-1998 Exchange Student, History Department, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
1992 M.A., Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of
Washington
ACADEMIC POSITIONS AND EXPERIENCE
2008-2010 Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Orient-Institut Istanbul
2003-2010 Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor), History Department, Istanbul Bilgi
University
2004-2006 Consultant, Seljuk-Karamanid-Ottoman periods, Göksu Archeological Project,
directed by Dr. Hugh Elton, former director of the British Institute of
Archaeology in Ankara (BIAA), presently at University of Trent, Canada
2006, 2010 Coordinator/Lecturer, “Istanbul: City and Civilization in the Eastern
Mediterranean World,” Northwestern University Summer Abroad
2000-2001 Lecturer in Turkish Studies, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of
Manchester, UK

Curriculum Vitae Sara Nur Yıldız October 2011
OTHER ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES AND PROJECTS
Sept. 2011-Feb. 2012
Organizer, Orient-Institut Istanbul Lecture Series: “Islam in Anatolia Through the
Ages”
Interdisciplinary lecture series presenting the latest approaches to the study of the
region’s diverse religious milieux during the medieval, Ottoman and modern
periods.
2009-2012 Curriculum Development Project: “The Caucasus and Byzantium: From Late
Antiquity Through the Middle Ages,”
Central European University, Budapest of the Higher Education Support Program
(HESP) project based at CEU’s Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies
Nov. 2011 Curriculum Development Project: Two-week mini-course entitled “Perso-Islamic
Civilization: the Great Seljuqs and the Anatolian Seljuqs”
Tbilisi Ivane Javakhishvili State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
2004-2006 Consultant, Seljuk-Karamanid-Ottoman periods, Göksu Archeological Project,
directed by Dr. Hugh Elton, former director of the British Institute of
Archaeology in Ankara (BIAA), presently at University of Trent, Canada
HONORS AND AWARDS
1996-1997 Graduate Student Research Grant, Institute of Turkish Studies
1995 Summer Travel Grant to Turkey, Institute of Turkish Studies
1994-1995 NDEA Title VI, Foreign language fellowship (F.L.A.S.) for the study of Arabic,
University of Chicago
1992-1996 Grant from University of Chicago Unendowed Funds for graduate study
1986-1987 NDEA Title VI, Foreign language fellowship (F.L.A.S.) for the study of Turkish,
University of Michigan
1986 Phi Beta Kappa Society
PUBLICATIONS
Book Chapters and Articles
2012 “Ottoman historical writing in Persian, 1400-1600.” In Charles Melville, ed. A
History of Persian Literature. Vol. 10, Persian Historiography. New York: I. B.
Tauris, pp. 436-502.
2012 “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, pp. 27-48.
2012 “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. Leiden: Brill, pp.
147-170.
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Curriculum Vitae Sara Nur Yıldız October 2011
2011 “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 Verlag, pp. 55-77.
2009 “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, pp. 307-
329.
2005 “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 Publishers, pp. 91-120.
2005 “Persian in service of the state: the role of Persophone historical writing in the
development of an Ottoman imperial aesthetic.” Studies on Persianate Societies 2,
pp. 145-163.
Encyclopaedia Entries
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2011 “Şikârî”; “Şükrullâh.” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, v. 39, Istanbul:
Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayını.
2004 “Historiography. xi. Persian Historiography in the Ottoman Empire.” Encyclopaedia
Iranica, vol. 12, fasc. 4, pp. 403-411.
Book Reviews
2003 Review of Minna Rozen, A history of the Jewish community in Istanbul: the
formative years, 1453-1566, H-Turk Review
2002 Review of Angus Donal Stewart, The Armenian Kingdom and the Mamluks: War and
Diplomacy During the Reigns of Het'um II (1289-1307), H-Medieval, The Medieval
Review
1995 Review of Refet Yinanc, Dulkadir Beyligi in al-'Usur al-Wusta (Bulletin of the
Middle East Medievalists)
WORK IN PRESS OR SUBMITTED FOR PUBLICATION
Book Chapters
Submitted, forthcoming, 2012
“Introduction.” Co-authered with A.C.S Peacock. In A.C.S Peacock and S.N. Yıldız,
eds. The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East. London
and New York: I.B. Tauris.
Submitted, forthcoming, 2012
“A nadīm for the Sultan: Rāvandī and the Rūm Seljuks.” In A.C.S Peacock and S.N.
Yıldız, eds. The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East.
London and New York: I.B. Tauris.
Submitted, forthcoming, 2012
“In the Proximity of Sultans: Majd al-Dīn Isḥāq, Ibn ‘Arabī and the Seljuk Court.”
(co-authored with Haşim Şahin). In A.C.S Peocock and S.N. Yıldız, eds. The Seljuks
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Curriculum Vitae Sara Nur Yıldız October 2011
of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East. London and New York:
I.B. Tauris.
Submitted, forthcoming, 2012
“The Rise and Fall of a Tyrant in Seljuk Anatolia, 1237-1238. Ibn Bibi's story of
Köpek.” In Firuza Abdullaeva, Robert Hillenbrand, and A.C.S. Peacock, eds.
Festschrift in Honor of Professor Charles Melville.
WORK IN PROGRESS
Monographs under Contract
To be submitted, forthcoming
Mongol Rule in Seljuk Anatolia: the Politics of Conquest and History Writing, 1243-
1282. Leiden and Boston: Brill (The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage Series, edited
by Suraiya Faroqhi and Halil İnalcık).
Book under contract to be submitted to publisher March-April, 2012
Projected submission date: Dec. 2012
The Seljuks of Anatolia: A Muslim Empire on the Frontier. Edinburgh University
Press (Islamic Empire Series, edited by Ian Netton).
Edited Volume under Contract
Forthcoming, 2012
Co-edited with A.C.S Peacock. The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the
Medieval Middle East. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.
PRESENTATIONS
Invited lectures
2011 “The Sultan Weds a Georgian Princess: Inter-Dynastic Marriage Ceremony,
Bagratid Prestige, and the Seljuk Sultanate in the Mid-Thirteenth Century.”
Tbilisi State University, Tblisi, Georgia
2009 “The Rise and Fall of a Tyrant in Seljuk Anatolia, 1237-1238,”
Institut für Turkologie, Freie Üniversität, Berlin
2007 “Ala al-Din Ata Malik Juvayni's patronage of Seljuk history under the Ilkhanid
Regime,”
Sabanci University, Orhanlı-Tuzla, Istanbul
2007 “Gendering the Ilkhanate: Exploring the ordu as the locus of royal women's political
and economic power”
Sakıp Sabanci Museum lecture series for the exhibition “Genghis Khan and His
Successors: the Mongol Empire,” Istanbul
2006 “Defending Islam in the Western Mongol Empire: A look at Juvayni's Patronage of
Ibn Bibi's Dynastic History of the Anatolian Seljuks (1282)”
American Research Institute of Turkey (ARIT), Istanbul
2006 “The Composition of Anatolian Seljuk Dynastic History under Ilkhanid Sovereignty:
Juvayni's Patronage of Ibn Bibi's History of the Seljuks”
Institut Français d'Etudes Anatoliennes (IFEA), Istanbul
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Curriculum Vitae Sara Nur Yıldız October 2011
2004 “Freeing Beylik History from Ottoman Stereotypes and Paradigms: Re-examining the
Emergence of Karamanid Power According to the Persian Sources”
Orient-Institut Istanbul
Professional meetings and international conferences
2011 “Towards historicizing Sufi communities in medieval Anatolia: reconsidering the
dominant paradigms of syncretism, heterodoxy and high/low Islam”
Conference: The Alevi-Bektashi Communities in the Ottoman Geography:
Historiography, Sources and Paradigms, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul
2011 “The Development of a Turcophone Rūmī Culture in Western Anatolia in the
Fourteenth Century: Aydınid and Germiyanid Patronage and the Ehl-i Rūm
Scholars”
Middle Eastern Studies Association of American, Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
2010 “Persian verse shahname-style historical writing at the Ottoman court in the late
fifteenth century: Firdawsi and Malik Ummi’s Shahnama”
The Shahnama Millenium Conference, Cambridge, UK
2009 “Possessing Kemah, Kilid-i Jahan (the Key to the World): Selim I's conquest of
fortresses along the Ottoman-Safavid frontier in the early sixteenth century”
Middle Eastern Studies Association of American, Annual Meeting, Boston
2009 “Rivaling for the Khan's favor: Seljuk-Armenian relations according Ibn Bibi's
discourse of conquest and loyalty”
Society for Armenian Studies, 35th Anniversary Conference
University of California, Los Angeles
2008 “The Development of a Persian Literary Culture at the Seljuk Court in Konya:
Ravandi's instructions in adab (courtly behavior and culture) for Sultan Kaykhusraw
I (1205)”
Middle Eastern Studies Association of American, Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
2008 “The Politics of Cosmology in Shukrullah's Fifteenth-Century Ottoman World
History”
American Historical Association, Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
2007 “Guarding the Frontier: Conflict and Alliance among Latin Crusaders, Seljuks and
Cilician Armenians, 1200-1216”
'The Eastern Mediterranean: Between Christian Europe and the Muslim Near East,
11 th -13 th Centuries,' Conference organized by the Orient Institut Beirut/Istanbul and
the German Historical Institutes (London, Paris and Rome), Istanbul
2007 “Eastern Anatolia: A Valid Geographical Unit for the 14th and 15th Centuries?”
Opening Lecture, Conference: At the Crossroads of Empire: 14 th -15 th Century
Eastern Anatolia, Istanbul
2005 “Persian Models and Ottoman Chronicles: Shukrullah's Bahjat al-tavarikh, a Mid-
Fifteenth-Century Ottoman Universal History and Persian Traditions of Historical
Writing,”
The Medieval Chronicle Conference, Reading, UK
2004 “Political Structures and the Exercise of Power in 13 th -century Seljuk Anatolia”
Second Biennal Conference of the Association of Persianate Societies, Yerevan,
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Armenia
Curriculum Vitae Sara Nur Yıldız October 2011
2002 “Persian as a Literary Means for Historical Composition during the Ottoman Period”
Association for the Study of Persianate Societies (ASPS), Second Biennal
Conference, Dushanbe, Tajikistan
2002 “Persian Historical Writing in the Ottoman Empire”
Society for Iranian Studies (SIS), Fourth Biennial Conference on Iranian Studies,
Bethesda, Maryland
2002 “Reconceptualizing the Seljuk-Cilician frontier: Armenians, Latins and Turks in
Conflict and Alliance during the Early 13 th Century”
American Historical Association (AHA), San Francisco
Workshops, internal seminars and colloquia
2010 “Post-Mongol pastoral polities in Eastern Anatolia in the Late Middle Ages”
Workshop: Spatial Dimensions of Power: Coexistence, Cooperation and Conflict in
Eastern Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Northwestern Iran, 11 th -16 th centuries, Bamberg,
16-18 April
2009 “Adab for the sultan: Rāvandī and the Anatolian Inheritance of the Great Seljuk
Sultanate's Dynastic Legacy”
Workshop: Court and Society in Seljuk Anatolia, Orient-Institut Istanbul
2008 “Ibn Bibi: Between Muslims and Mongols”
Colloquium, Orient-Institut Beirut
2008 “Medieval History and Language Reform in Kemalist Turkey: Karamanoğlu
Mehmed Bey and the Celebration of the Turkish Language Festival in Karaman
Turkey, 1960-present”
Workshop: “Religion, Ethnicity and Contested Nationhood in the Former Ottoman
Space,” The Swedish Consulate-General, Istanbul, and the Swedish Research Centre,
Istanbul
2008 “Language Politics in the Provinces: Karamanoğlu Mehmed Bey, the 'father of
Tukish” and the Turkish Language Festival”
Orient-Institut Istanbul
2007 “Going beyond the vatan: a critique of Turkish nationalist historiography of the
Seljuk, Karamanid and Ottoman periods”
Workshop: “A Post-Ottoman Historiography?” Organized by the Swedish Institute,
Istanbul and the Danish Institute, Damascus, at the Swedish Consulate, Istanbul
2007 “A View from the Periphery: Turkmen Resistance to the Ottoman Order in the Rough
Cilician (İç-il) Frontier, 1468-1535”
Workshop: “Frontiers of the Ottoman World: Fortifications, trade, pilgrimage and
slavery,” Sponsored by The British Academy, London
2003 “Persian in the Service of the Sultan”
Early Ottoman History Lecture Series, Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul
2001 “Re-reading Ibn Bibi as a Source for Early Karamanid History”
Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK
2001 “Metaphorical Coherence, Narrative and the Byzantine Past in a Sixteenth-century
Turkish Text: Shikari's History of the Karamanids”
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Curriculum Vitae Sara Nur Yıldız October 2011
Medieval European Research Seminar, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
2001 “Where was Kamar al-Din? Re-examining Seljuk Conquests and Karamanid
Settlement along the Seljuk-Cilician Frontier”
Workshop: “Land and Power in Anatolia and the Balkans, ca. 1000-1700,”
Organized by the University of Manchester and the University of Birmingham, held
at the University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
2001 “Examining the Historicity of Shikari's History of the Karamanids”
Research Seminar, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Manchester,
Manchester, UK
COURSES
Istanbul Bilgi University
2003-2008 World History
Required year-long lecture survey for first-year undergraduate students covering the
ancient world to 1500, concentrating on Europe/Mediterreanean world and its
relationship to Eurasia
2004-2008 Reading History
Required year-long seminar for first-year history undergraduate students,
concentrating on reading primary sources/seminal historical works in English
translation paralleling the historical periods and topics covered in world history
2003-2008 History of Istanbul (Byzantium to the 19 th -century)
Elective seminar/lecture for second-year undergraduate students
2004-2006 History of the Mongol World Empire
Elective seminar/lecture for second-year undergraduate students
2003-2005 Methodology and Philosophy of History
Required year-long seminar for third-year history undergraduate students
2003 Topics in Islamic Civilization
Elective seminar for fourth-year undergraduate students
2006 History of Modern Iran (Qajar period to the Islamic Republic)
Elective seminar for fourth-year history undergraduate students
2007-2008 Masters Seminar: Topics in Early Ottoman History
University of Manchester
2000-2001 Ottoman History (both at the lower and upper undergraduate levels)
Modern Turkish Texts, Modern Turkish Grammar, Ottoman Turkish Texts
LANGUAGES
English, Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, French, German, Arabic (basic), Russian (basic)
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