Abstract
This presentation will revisit the author's monograph "The Shiites of Lebanon under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1788", based on his award-winning Chicago dissertation and published by Cambridge University Press in 2010, ahead of its publication in Turkish translation by Koç University Press later this year. In reframing the work specifically for a modern Middle Eastern audience, it will highlight the discursive associations made by the Ottoman state between the Lebanese Shiites and the Kızılbaş, and try to suggest ways in which the particular experiences of the Lebanese Shiites help illuminate the situation of non-orthodox populations throughout the Empire.
Bio
Stefan Winter (PhD Chicago, 2002) is professor of history at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Koç University in Istanbul. His research revolves around local Ottoman administration in northern and western Syria and on Ottoman relations with Arab and Kurdish tribal populations in particular. He is the author of The Shiites of Lebanon under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1788 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), A History of the ‘Alawis: From Medieval Aleppo to the Turkish Republic (Princeton University Press, 2016) and Rural Society in Western Syria in the Early Modern Period (Isis Press, Istanbul, 2022), and the co-editor, with Zainab HajHasan, of Syrian-Kurdish Intersections in the Ottoman Period (University of Toronto Press, 2024). His current research project is an investigation of the Ottoman "desert emirate" (çöl beyilik) of northern Syria and Iraq in the 16th to 19th century. He lives with his family between Montréal and Istanbul.
Find the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies on Google Maps