CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Mahmoud, Abdelrahman Muhammed |
|---|---|
| Title | From Malik al-Rum to Sahib Qiran: The Changing Concepts of Sovereignty and Legitimacy in the Ottoman-Arab World of the Sixteenth Century |
| Summary | This thesis examines the historiographical productions by three late Mamluk historians (Ibn Zunbul, Ibn Iyās and Ibn Ṭūlūn) and the emergence of a discourse of universalist sovereignty in the Neat East in the early sixteenth century. To better understand how Ottoman imperial power was anchored in the core Muslim lands, I study the political terminology that shaped the late Mamluk historians‘ perceptions of change and political legitimacy. My arguments posit that the Ottoman incorporation of Egypt and Bilād al-Shām in 1516-17 was facilitated by the Muslim historiographic tradition and the discourse around the notion of Sāhib Qirān (the Master of Auspicious Conjunction). Overall, the thesis attempts to re-contextualize the transition period in light of the recent scholarship on Ottoman imperialism in the early modern period and how its legitimating ideology program was devised by scholars who traversed the region including the Mamluk-ruled lands. On the other hand, by tracing the development and movement of the discourse of universalist sovereignty in the early modern Muslim world, I argue that the Ottoman incorporation of Egypt and Bilād al-Shām transpired against a sixteenth-century backdrop in which a new language of sovereignty was in the making. Therefore, I argue that a synchronic study of the larger historiographical productions in the region can reveal how imperialism was legitimated textually and how political transitions were dealt with conceptually. |
| Supervisor | Krstić, Tijana; Al-Bagdadi, Nadia |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/mahmoud_abdelrahman.pdf |
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