University of Heidelberg

Tobias Graf is preparing a prosopographic study of so-called renegades in the Ottoman Empire in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These foreign converts to Islam frequently entered the sultan’s service as soldiers and administrators. Although the topic has been subject to several studies in recent decades, there have been no attempts to systematically examine the roles which these individuals assumed within the Ottoman state. Moreover, assessments of their part in cultural flows, particularly transfers of information, knowledge, and technologies, have never reached beyond poorly-founded generalizations which owed more to the respective scholars’ prejudices than actual evidence. In order to shed some light on the relevance of renegades as agents of cultural flows, their conversions, and their subsequent careers within the Ottoman military-administrative elite (ʿaskeri), particular attention will be paid to the networks–particularly webs of patronage, family ties, and correspondence networks–in which they were active. After all, cultural transfers of whatever sort could only make a difference, if and when what was transmitted reached someone who could make it matter to the new surroundings.

Tobias Graf's CV