Cihan Yüksel
Associate Professor

Phone: (713) 743-TBA
Email: ecyuksel@central.uh.edu
Office: 541 Agnes Arnold Hall
CV

Dr. Cihan Yüksel is a specialist of Ottoman history. Her current work focuses mostly on the interactions between two major Muslim Empires, the Ottomans and the Mamluks. Her next major project explores the impact of fifteenth-century Ottoman court culture, politics, and networks on imperial politics and the images of sovereigns. Before joining the UH History Department, she was a faculty member at University of Texas at Dallas (2007-2015). During the academic year 2022-23, she serves as the Acting Director of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Center for Arab Studies.

Education

• Ph.D.: History and Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University (2007).

• B.A.: Koç University, Turkey (1999).

Teaching

Dr. Yüksel teaches courses on Ottoman Empire, comparative imperial histories with a particular emphasis on Ottoman and Mamluk empires, Islamic history, travel and knowledge in the medieval and early modern Islamic world.

back to top

Research Interests

Networks between medieval and Early Modern Muslim powers/societies; diplomacy; sovereignty; formation of perceptions and identities; imperial transitions; travel; Mediterranean history.

back to top

Selected Publications

Book:

• The Ottomans and the Mamluks: Imperial Diplomacy and Warfare in the Islamic World. London: I.B.Tauris, 2014.

  • Turkish translation: Osmanlılar ve Memluklar: İslam Dünyasında İmparatorluk Diplomasisi ve Rekabet. Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2016.

• “Patterns of Mobility between Ottoman and Mamluk Lands.” In The Mamluk Sultanate from the Perspective of Regional and World History. Edited by Reuven Amitai and Stephan Conermann. Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2019.

• “Nomadic Borders of Ottoman Provinces during the Mamluk-Ottoman Imperial Transition.” In The Mamluk-Ottoman Transition. Edited by Stephan Conermann and Gül Şen. Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2017.

• “Attempting to Understand the Language of Diplomacy between the Ottomans and the Mamluks.” Archivum Ottomanicum 30 (2013): 247-69.

• “Ottoman-Mamluk Relations and the Complex Image of Bayezid II.” In Conquête ottomane de l'Egypte (1517): arrière-plan, impact, échos. Edited by Benjamin Lellouche and Nicholas Michel. Leiden: Brill, 2013.