Dr Christopher Markiewicz

Department of History
Lecturer in Ottoman and Islamic History

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)121 414 9123
Email: c.markiewicz@bham.ac.uk

I am the lecturer in Ottoman and Islamic History in the Department of History and a member of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman & Modern Greek Studies. My research focuses on the intellectual and political history of the Ottoman Empire between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. I am particularly interested in how ideas about history and the nature of kingship in the Ottoman Empire were connected with wider intellectual, cultural, and religious currents across the Islamic world in the early modern period.

Qualifications

PhD in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago
MA in Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago
BA in History, University of Chicago
Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education, University of Birmingham

Biography

I studied history as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. One year after graduating, I took up studying Arabic in Lebanon and Egypt before returning to Chicago for a master’s in Middle Eastern Studies. I stayed on for a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. In the course of these studies, I spent one year studying at Bilkent University in Ankara and another year conducting research in Istanbul. Immediately before coming to Birmingham, I spent two years as a research fellow at Exeter College, Oxford. In 2016, my doctoral dissertation was awarded the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in the Humanities from the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

Teaching

Undergraduate teaching

Practicing History
Living in the Medieval World, 1050-1500
The Early Modern World
Cities of the Ancient and Medieval Mediterranean: Monuments and Memories
After the Mongols: Political Authority in Islam, 1200-1600
Islamicate Empires: The Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals in the Early Modern World

Postgraduate teaching

Global Histories: Comparisons and Connections
Introduction to Early Modern History

Postgraduate supervision

I am happy to discuss supervising postgraduate research in all aspects of Ottoman history, as well as the political and intellectual history of Islamic lands after the arrival of the Mongols (thirteenth-seventeenth centuries).

Find out more - our PhD Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

I am currently working on a book project that focuses on an examination of the life and work of Idris Bidlisi, visionary historian of the Ottoman dynasty, influential adviser to sultans, and principal architect of the Ottoman incorporation of Kurdistan in the 1510s. Through examination of Bidlisi, the book examines the impact of itinerant scholars and secretaries upon the development and adaptation of new ideas on kingship among Muslim courts across large parts of Asia in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.