Kurdish Nobility in the Ottoman Empire: Loyalty, Autonomy, and Privilege | Book Talk with Nilay Özok-Gündoğan

For centuries, Kurdish ruling households occupied a distinctive place in the Ottoman imperial system, yet hereditary nobility has been largely dismissed as a meaningful political category in Ottoman historiography. This talk explores how Kurdish noble families, particularly the Palu begs, navigated shifting political and fiscal landscapes from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. It examines the ways in which they negotiated autonomy, retained privileges, and adapted to changing imperial policies. The discussion also revisits the long and contested process through which their noble status was abolished and sheds light on the broader dynamics of Ottoman governance, property regimes, and intercommunal relations in Kurdistan. By focusing on both imperial strategies and local agency, the talk offers new insights into the evolving relationship between the Ottoman state and its Kurdish elites.

Nilay Özok-Gündoğan is an Associate Professor of Ottoman and Middle East history at Florida State University and a 2024–2025 Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. Her research explores modern state-making, elite formation, property regimes, extractive economies, and intercommunal conflict and coexistence in the Ottoman Empire, with a particular focus on Kurdistan. Her work situates Ottoman, Kurdish, Armenian, and Turkish histories in an interconnected framework, challenging dominant narratives that marginalize Kurdistan in Middle East Studies and Ottoman historiography. She also writes on methodological questions in Kurdish Studies. She received her Ph.D. from Binghamton University in 2011 and held an ACM-Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cornell College (2012–2013). She was also a Scholar Rescue Fund Fellow (2016–2017). Her work has appeared in the Journal of Social History, International Journal of Middle East Studies, New Perspectives on Turkey, and edited volumes. Her first book, The Kurdish Nobility in the Ottoman Empire: Loyalty, Autonomy, and Privilege, won the 2023 Book Prize from the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association. She is the co-editor of “Decolonizing Kurdish Studies,” a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, which critically examines the disciplinary and epistemological constraints that have shaped the study of Kurds and Kurdistan. She serves as the co- editor of the Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association (JOTSA).