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The CMES New Works in Middle East Studies series presents
Ayfer Karakaya-Stump
Associate Professor, Department of History, College of William & Mary
Winner of the 2020 SERMEISS Book Award for outstanding scholarship in Middle Eastern/Islamic Studies, The Kizilbash-Alevis in Ottoman Anatolia explores the transformation of the Kizilbash from a radical religio-political movement to a religious order of closed communities. The Kizilbash were at once key players in and the foremost victims of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict that defined the early modern Middle East. Today referred to as Alevis, they constitute the second largest faith community in modern Turkey, with smaller pockets of related groups in the Balkans. Yet several aspects of their history remain little understood or explored. This first comprehensive socio-political history of the Kizilbash/Alevi communities uses a recently surfaced corpus of sources generated within their milieu. This book offers fresh answers to many questions concerning their origins and evolution from a revolutionary movement to an inward-looking religious order.
Contact: Liz Flanagan