Why did a sixteenth-century Ottoman historian use Christian sources to narrate Bulgarian history?

What is it about?

In 1502/3, the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II (1481–1512) commissioned the scholar Kemalpashazade, or Ibn Kemal, to compose an elaborate history of the Ottoman House, while also entrusting him with a professorship in Edirne, and later in Üsküp (Skopje). Apart from being one of the most comprehensive syntheses of early Ottoman historiography and a significant advancement in terms of style and methodology, Kemalpashazade’s work contains distinctive features uncharacteristic of both earlier and later historical writing. The most striking of these is a lengthy section on the “sultans of the Bulgarian people,” which appears to be based on a medieval historical-apocalyptic text titled “Tale of the Prophet Isaiah,” and known to modern scholarship as the “Bulgarian Apocryphal Chronicle.” This paper attempts to contextualize Kemalpashazade’s “Bulgarian History” on several levels. It surveys the place of the author’s broader work within Ottoman historical thought at the turn of the 16th century with a particular focus on the varying approaches to the diverse legacy of Rum—the former core lands of the Eastern Roman civilization that were by that time largely under Ottoman rule. The study inquires into the circumstances of the Christian Tale’s circulation around the time it was encountered by Kemālpashazāde, likely in an already existing Muslim adaptation. The role of apocalypticism as a transconfessional phenomenon and the socio-cultural setting of the region of Skopje are discussed as possible contexts that may have facilitated such an intercultural transfer of knowledge. An analysis of the narrative transformation accompanying this transfer reveals Kemalpashazade’s “Bulgarian History” to be a product of symbolic appropriation of Christian imperial tradition. Its aim was to highlight the Ottoman dynasty’s ascent as the supreme rulers of Rum—a land long associated with mighty empires.

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Photo by Hacı Elmas on Unsplash

Photo by Hacı Elmas on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Ottoman (Muslim) authors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries rarely used non-Muslim material. Kemalpashazade’s idiosyncratic “Bulgarian History” was one of the few exceptions that prove the rule, and one that has hitherto received no scholarly attention. Tracing its emergence and context can help us gain a better understanding of the cultural interactions between Muslims and Christians in the early Ottoman domains. It also highlights a specific moment in the development of Ottoman imperial ideology, at a time when these domains coincided with the lands of Rum and did not extend beyond them.