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Forgotten Experts: Astrologers, Science, and Authority in the Ottoman Empire, 1450–1600
Forgotten Experts offers a history of Ottoman court astrologers and traces their shifting authority and prestige over the long sixteenth century. These individuals served the Ottoman court with their expertise in mathematical, astronomical, and astrological sciences, distinguishing themselves from other occult practitioners and esoteric specialists. While both prophecy and prognostication are attempts to map the terrain of the future, the astrologers' work did not claim spiritual weight as a prophecy but relied instead on methods of prediction developed from data and patterns elaborated through technical and scientific writings.
Drawing on extensive manuscript and archival records written in Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, A. Tunç Şen writes a history of science, state formation, and bureaucracy within the overarching tale of Ottoman imperial formation and protocols. He invites readers to follow Ottoman court astrologers' fluctuating careers as practitioners of a contentious science and shows how this class of learned individuals constructed its scientific authority despite numerous cultural, societal, and epistemic challenges. In understanding the expertise of court astrologers, we gain insight into the intricate social relations established and maintained between the men of knowledge and the men of rule, between expertise and statecraft, in the early modern Ottoman imperial context.
Drawing on extensive manuscript and archival records written in Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, A. Tunç Şen writes a history of science, state formation, and bureaucracy within the overarching tale of Ottoman imperial formation and protocols. He invites readers to follow Ottoman court astrologers' fluctuating careers as practitioners of a contentious science and shows how this class of learned individuals constructed its scientific authority despite numerous cultural, societal, and epistemic challenges. In understanding the expertise of court astrologers, we gain insight into the intricate social relations established and maintained between the men of knowledge and the men of rule, between expertise and statecraft, in the early modern Ottoman imperial context.
352 pages, Hardcover
Published May 20, 2025
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March 17, 2026In the late 15th century the future sultan Bayezid II wrote to his father, Mehmed II, to insist that the designer drugs he had been sampling at courtly parties – opium, cannabis, and opium-laced cannabis – were taken merely for the sake of losing weight. Mehmed was furious. Having posted Bayezid to the vibrant Silk Road city of Amasya as governor, he now heard how drugs stole his son’s ‘humanity’ and ‘noble character’. His response was to dispatch investigators to identify, then execute, those responsible for leading his son astray.
The main culprit turned out to be Bayezid’s childhood friend, Müeyyedzade Abdurrahman Çelebi (1456-1516). A few years younger than Bayezid, Müeyyedzade had studied writing and fine arts alongside the future sultan, before both men began to move in elite literary circles. Mehmed’s warrant, however, forced him to flee to Aleppo, then Shiraz, separating them until 1481, when Bayezid’s ascension to the throne allowed them to reunite in Constantinople.
There, Müeyyedzade’s influence on Bayezid extended beyond narcotic experimentation. The two friends shared a taste not only for stimulants and narcotics, but also for the mathematical sciences and, in particular, astrology. This was a field of study that Bayezid patronised with zeal throughout his time as sultan (1481-1512). As A. Tunç Şen shows, before the late 15th century the Ottoman court had often appointed astrologers to compile almanacs, advise on timekeeping, identify auspicious moments, and offer astrological advice on imperial strategy. But it was under Bayezid that this ad hoc approach was replaced by the institution of a permanent post for astrologers in the court. Remarkably, this office remained active until the Empire’s dissolution in the 20th century. The focus of Forgotten Experts, however, is the long 16th century, a period in which court astrologers were part and parcel of efforts to turn the Ottoman Empire into a bureaucratic machine, running on a vast web of experts: lawyers to litigate territorial expansion, architect-engineers to erect monuments, and astrologers to advise decision-makers.
Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
Michelle Pfeffer is a historian at Magdalen College, Oxford.
The main culprit turned out to be Bayezid’s childhood friend, Müeyyedzade Abdurrahman Çelebi (1456-1516). A few years younger than Bayezid, Müeyyedzade had studied writing and fine arts alongside the future sultan, before both men began to move in elite literary circles. Mehmed’s warrant, however, forced him to flee to Aleppo, then Shiraz, separating them until 1481, when Bayezid’s ascension to the throne allowed them to reunite in Constantinople.
There, Müeyyedzade’s influence on Bayezid extended beyond narcotic experimentation. The two friends shared a taste not only for stimulants and narcotics, but also for the mathematical sciences and, in particular, astrology. This was a field of study that Bayezid patronised with zeal throughout his time as sultan (1481-1512). As A. Tunç Şen shows, before the late 15th century the Ottoman court had often appointed astrologers to compile almanacs, advise on timekeeping, identify auspicious moments, and offer astrological advice on imperial strategy. But it was under Bayezid that this ad hoc approach was replaced by the institution of a permanent post for astrologers in the court. Remarkably, this office remained active until the Empire’s dissolution in the 20th century. The focus of Forgotten Experts, however, is the long 16th century, a period in which court astrologers were part and parcel of efforts to turn the Ottoman Empire into a bureaucratic machine, running on a vast web of experts: lawyers to litigate territorial expansion, architect-engineers to erect monuments, and astrologers to advise decision-makers.
Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
Michelle Pfeffer is a historian at Magdalen College, Oxford.
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