Side Emre
  • Associate Professor
  • Phone: 979-845-7151
  • Email: sideemre@tamu.edu
  • Office: Melbern G. Glasscock Building, 210A
  • Document: CV
Research Areas
  • Empires & Colonialism
  • Religion & Politics

Research Interests

Side Emre (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2009) specializes in the late medieval and early modern history of the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. In her first book, Ibrahim-i Gulshani and the Khalwati-Gulshani Order: Power Brokers in Ottoman Egypt (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2017) (https://brill.com/view/title/32853?format=HC) she examined the historical trajectory of the Khalwati-Gulshani order of dervishes with a focus on their socio-political and cultural impact in the local/inter-regional communities they lived and networked in the pre-modern Muslim world. Her research brings together Near/Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean/North African history (political, cultural, intellectual and religious) and establishes dialogues with medieval, early modernist and modernist scholars from a wide array of disciplines. In her wider research, Emre focuses on the connections between politics, society, religion, and Sufism (Islamic mysticism) in the pre-modern Muslim world. Current research areas include: visual representations in Ottoman mystical texts, esoteric sciences in medieval and early modern Ottoman culture, Anatolian Turkish literature, early modern empire, law, heresy, the influence of Ibn al-‘Arabi in Ottoman intellectual and cultural history/historiography, and Sufism, with its cultural, political, and societal reflections in the Ottoman/Mamluk and Egyptian historical context of the early modern period.

Areas of Speciality

  • Islamic History
  • Religion
  • Intellectual History
  • Sufism
  • Early Modern Ottoman Political

Educational Background

  • Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2009

Selected Publications

  • “Anatomy of a Rebellion in Sixteenth-Century Egypt: A case-study of Ahmed Pasha’s governorship, revolt, and a critique of the Ottoman imperial enterprise in the Arab Lands.” Journal of Ottoman Studies XLVI (2015): 333-385.
  • “A Preliminary Investigation of Ibn ʿArabi’s Influence Reflected in the Corpus of İbrahim-i Gulsheni (d.1534) and the Halveti-Gulsheni Order of Dervishes in Egypt.” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society 56  (2014): 67-113.
  • “Crafting Piety for Success: Gülşeniye Literature and Culture in the Sixteenth Century.” Journal of Sufi Studies 1.1 (2012): 31-75.
  • “A Subversive Story of Banishment, Persecution, and Incarceration on the Eve of the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt: İbrahim-i Gülşeni’s Mamluk Years 1507/10-1517 in Sufism and Society: Arrangements of the Mystical in the Muslim World, 1200-1800 C.E., ed. John J. Curry and Erik S. Ohlander (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 201-222.
  • Encyclopedia of Islam, Third Edition: “Gulshaniyya” article.