Kaya, Betül

University of Chicago

Research Title: Judging non-Muslim religious practice in the early 17th century Ottoman Empire: Politics of Judicial Authority and Competing Legal Perspectives

Ms. Kaya is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. She is interested in the 17th-century sociolegal history of the Ottoman Empire, with a focus on Greek Orthodox communities. Her project aims to explore the expressions of non-Muslim religious observance in the early 17th-century, the role of Ottoman religious scholars in defining social and religious norms, and the way in which religious scholars formulated their ideas and challenged assumptions of each other with respect to the regulations of non-Muslim religious practice. She also intends to demonstrate how different religious communities experienced and dealt with changes in legal discourses and social policies.