Introduction|9of Selim I (r. 1512–1520) and Süleyman (r. 1520–1566). The expansion brought new
opportunities and challenges to the empire, because it incorporated lands previ-
ously ruled by other Islamic dynasties into the Ottoman realm. The empire also
faced the challenge of the rise of the Shiɇi Safavid dynasty in Iran at the begin-
ning of the sixteenth century.
In chapter 7 Nabil Al-Tikriti traces developments within Ottoman Islamic
thought during the early sixteenth century that reveal a society affected by the
age of confessionalization. Ibn-i Kemal (d. 1534) helped bring Ottoman clerics
into an integrative relationship with the state and became one of the most in-
fluential religious officials of his generation when the divide between Ottoman
Sunnism and Safavid Shiɇism was widening. His writings helped shape a dis-
tinctive Ottoman religious identity that still heavily influences religiopolitical
discourse in the region today.
In chapter 8 Leslie Peirce asks how a province learned to think of itself as
Ottoman. Peirce focuses on the city of Aintab, located north of Aleppo, which
surrendered to Ottoman forces in 1516 and entered the empire as the capital of a
midsized, rather ordinary, province. It explores how Aintab was integrated into
the new regime’s systems of military, legal, and fiscal control and goes further to
learn what the province thought about its new position within the empire. The
chapter’s basic argument is that the sense of being Ottoman depended on the
degree to which Aintabans could exploit the new regime. Profitable collabora-
tion with the sultanate was possible, because even though the empire’s integrative
networks and processes were conceived in Istanbul, it was local actors who made
them locally effective. Examples of Aintabans who could see themselves as new
men and new women in a new regime included tribal chieftains given positions
in the Ottoman army, wealthy women investing in the revived commerce stimu-
lated by Ottoman rule, and entrepreneurs bidding for tax farms made lucrative
by rising prosperity. However, not everyone found a prosperous niche within the
new regime, and tax farmers now had Ottoman law behind them as they pres-
sured the poor. Additionally, the imposition of religious conformity by Süleyman
the Magnificent defined some Aintabans as heretics.
In chapter 9 Amy Singer analyzes the Ottomanizing of Jerusalem through
construction, endowment, and administrative change by exploring how the
Ottomans invested in reshaping the places and peoples they conquered. Standard
accounts of the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem in 1516 have little to say about
the event itself, largely because it occurred with little conflict or upheaval. Yet a
closer examination of the first half century of Ottoman rule reveals that the Otto-
mans invested enormous sums and energy in the conquest of Jerusalem, even in
the absence of overt military opposition. These expenditures reflect the status of
the city, which was disproportionate to the importance of its location, economy,
and population. As a holy city for Muslims, it drew Ottoman attention, yet its