Arslan-Yıldız, Sara Nur

Institute of Iranian Studies, School of History, University of St Andrews

Research Topic: The Seljuk Empire of Anatolia

Dr. Yıldız is a historian of the political, cultural, religious, and intellectual life of late medieval Anatolia of the Seljuk, Mongol and Ottoman periods. She received her PhD from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago (2006). Her current research focuses on Islamization, textual production and the transfer of knowledge, and Islamic/Ottoman medical textual traditions. She has served as assistant professor at Istanbul Bilgi University (2003–2010), researcher at the Orient-Institut Istanbul (2011–2016), and research fellow on the European Research Council Project entitled “The Islamisation of Anatolia, c. 1100-1500,” based at the School of History, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK (2013–2016). Her ANAMED project “The Seljuk Empire of Anatolia” involves the completion of a nearly finished monograph – Mongol Rule in Seljuk Anatolia: the Politics of Conquest and History Writing, 1243–1282 – and the writing of a second monograph, The Seljuks of Anatolia: Empire-Building on the Frontiers of the Muslim World. Her recent publications include: “A Hanafi Law Manual in the Vernacular: Devletoğlu Yūsuf Balıḳesrī’s Turkish Verse Adaptation of the Hidāya-Wiqāya Textual Tradition for the Ottoman Sultan Murad II” (BSOAS 2017) and Islamic Literature and Intellectual Life in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-century Anatolia (co-edited with A.C.S. Peacock, 2016).