the ottoman empire and safavid iran, 1639-1682: diplomacy and borderlands in the early modern middle east

Ottoman-Safavid relations after 1639 have been dismissed as marginal and assumed not to have produced sufficient documentation to facilitate a study, wherefore the subject matter has lacked even an introduction providing basic facts, let alone a comprehensive treatment. This book establishes for the first time the mission exchanges, correspondence, negotiations, and borderland encounters by drawing on scattered and hitherto-untapped archival documents, chronicle entries, and travelogues by the Ottomans, Safavids, and Europeans. Working up the information unearthed thereby, it reconstructs the groundwork of these dealings, highlights trends, and contextualizes the facts.

The book refutes the assumption that mid-seventeenth-century interstate scene of the Middle East was eventless, and documents how the parties in question intensively bargained, displayed goodwill, made demands, delivered threats, presented displays of might, asked for privileges as well as concessions, and brought in third parties to their relations, all within an unequal relationship in strength, hierarchy, order of precedence, ranks, and protocol.

Selim Güngörürler is currently researcher in the Institute of Iranian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His earlier affiliations include Boğaziçi University (2016-2018 as post-doctoral researcher) and Georgetown University (2011-2017 as doctorand and teaching assistant). He has published in the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient and the Turkish Historical Review and contributed to Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire ed. Tijana Krstic and Derin Terzioğlu and authored The Repercussions of the Austro-Russian-Turkish War (1736-1739) on the Diplomacy and the International Status of the Ottoman Empire.