About
Ph.D. Program: Turkish Studies
Samet Budak specializes in intellectual and cultural histories of the Eastern Mediterranean in the transitional period from Middle Ages to Early Modernity (1300-1600). His Ph.D. thesis attempts to discover networks of scholars and thinkers with epistemological commonalities along the region including Ottoman, Byzantine, Mamluk and Italian zones. His dissertation is constructed around three major philosophers; Gemistos Pletho (d. 1452), the champion of Platonism in the fifteenth century, Bedreddin of Simavna (d. 1420), a mystical philosopher and a revolutionary and Abdurrahman al-Bistami (d. 1454), an influential encyclopedist and occultist.
Through a detailed analysis of their works, networks and ideas, Budak’s dissertation aims to construct the epistemic space within which various thinkers from seemingly disparate backgrounds interacted with each other, formed secret societies and brotherhoods from Cairo to Florence, enjoyed an enormous degree of mobility and used similar vocabularies and thinking patterns. In addition to all these, the dissertation aims to shed light on how patronage shaped these networks and cultural production with a particular focus on the patronage of the Ottomans (especially Mehmed II), Mamluks (Barquq) and the Medici. In doing so the dissertation is going to unearth hitherto unknown connections and epistemological relations, based on a wide range of previously neglected or unknown works and empirical data.
Additionally, Samet Budak’s diverse scholarly interests include philology, political thought, manuscript studies, memory studies and history of architecture.
His selected publications:
- “The Temple of the Incredulous’: Ottoman Sultanic Mosques and the Principle of Legality,” Muqarnas 36 (2019), 179-207.
- “A Hitherto Unknown Manuscript of Aḥmed-i Dāʿī’s Çengnāme and Some Reflections on the Intricacies of Ottoman Manuscript Culture,” Journal of Turkish Studies, 51 (2019), 237-248.
- “Bellini Enigması: Gentile Bellini’ye İzafe Edilen II. Mehmed Portreleri Üzerine Tartışmalar [Bellini’s Enigma: Discussions on Mehmed II Portraits Attributed to Gentile Bellini],” Toplumsal Tarih [Social History], (2020) forthcoming.
See: https://umich.academia.edu/SametBudak
