Cihan Yüksel
Cihan Yüksel is an Associate Professor of Ottoman History. Before joining the University of Houston in 2015, she held a tenured position at the University of Texas, Dallas. Trained in Arabic as well as Ottoman Turkish, she has long been interested in inter-Islamic imperial dynamics unfolding across the Arab “Mashriq” and Anatolia. This interest developed during her doctoral studies at Harvard, where she was advised by Prof. Cemal Kafadar, and also received training on the Ottoman history of the Arab lands by Prof. Nelly Hanna. Prof. Yüksel’s first book “The Ottomans and the Mamluks: Imperial Diplomacy and Warfare in the Islamic World” (I.B. Tauris, 2014) examined the rich and multilayered encounters between the Ottoman and Mamluk empires, challenging eurocentric accounts that reduce the history of diplomacy to Europe, overlooking rich and highly influential diplomatic traditions in the Islamic world and elsewhere. The book was translated into Turkish under the title “Osmanlılar ve Memluklar: İslam Dünyasında İmparatorluk Diplomasisi ve Rekabet” (Kitap Yayınevi, 2016). It was followed by research projects examining the Ottoman-Mamluk borderlands, Islamic captivity narratives, amongst other themes. Professor Yüksel currently convenes the annual Ottoman History lecture at the University of Houston, which has hosted several distinguished figures in the field.