# #491 - Boundaries of Belonging in the Ottoman Empire: A Dialogue with Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/converging-dialogues-1498806/491-boundaries-of-belonging-in-the-ottoman-empire-a-dialogue-with-ay-e-baltac-o-lu-brammer Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/converging-dialogues-1498806/491-boundaries-of-belonging-in-the-ottoman-empire-a-dialogue-with-ay-e-baltac-o-lu-brammer.md Podcast: [Converging Dialogues](https://stenobird.com/podcast/converging-dialogues-1498806) Published: 2026-05-18T03:06:46+00:00 Episode link: https://convergingdialogues.substack.com/p/491-boundaries-of-belonging-in-the Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/197856201/561f905439e49d58a18de4d459db324c.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/converging-dialogues-1498806/episodes/491-boundaries-of-belonging-in-the-ottoman-empire-a-dialogue-with-ay-e-baltac-o-lu-brammer Duration seconds: 5251 ## Resource In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer about belonging among various ethnic and religious groups in the early and middle Ottoman period. They discuss the landscape of religious and sectarian divides in the early Ottoman Empire, Turkic origins of the Safavids and Sufis, the Qizilbash, and various sociocultural variables. They talk about immigration between the Safavids and the Ottomans, the Safavid’s turn from Sufi to Shia, Qizilbash documents and Ottoman surveillance, remnants today, and many more topics. Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer is Assistant Professor of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies & Steering Committee Chair of the Ottoman Studies Initiative (OTS-NYU) at New York University. She has her PhD from The Ohio State University. She specializes in Middle Eastern history, with a focus on early modern Ottoman and Safavid Empires. She is the author of the book, Boundaries of Belonging: Sectarianism and Statecraft in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire . Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/converging-dialogues-1498806/episodes/491-boundaries-of-belonging-in-the-ottoman-empire-a-dialogue-with-ay-e-baltac-o-lu-brammer/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/converging-dialogues-1498806/491-boundaries-of-belonging-in-the-ottoman-empire-a-dialogue-with-ay-e-baltac-o-lu-brammer.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.