John-Paul A. Ghobrial

Historians of the early modern Ottoman Empire have long been pointing out that in the early sixteenth century the religious outlook of the sultans and the imperially sponsored hierarchy of religious scholars underwent a shift: while heretofore they had been largely unconcerned with defining, observing or enforcing a Sunni 'orthodoxy' and 'orthopraxy', they now became increasingly invested in precisely such a project. How did the understanding of what...