The Spiritual Vernacular of the Early Ottoman Frontier - (Edinburgh Studies on the Ottoman Empire) by Carlos Grenier

This book is a groundbreaking study of early Ottoman popular piety through the lives and ideas of the Yazıcıoğlu brothers, Mehmed Yazıcıoğlu and Ahmed Bican, Sufis of Gelibolu.

The author, Carlos Grenier, places their durable religious vision within their dynamic historical moment on the contested Ottoman borderlands, examining how they deployed their intellectual resources to create a religious synthesis appropriate for their community, the growing Turcophone Muslim population of the Balkans and Anatolia.

This book is the first in English on the Yazıcıoğlu brothers, offering a comprehensive reconstruction of their biographies, analysis of their heritage, and assessment of how their ideas were adapted to their distinct setting.

The author argues that Ottoman popular orthodoxy emerged as a synthesis of a cosmopolitan Islamic canon to address the needs of Turcophone Muslims of the Ottoman lands.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in early Ottoman history, Sufism, and non-elite intellectual life of Ottoman Muslims at the dawn of an imperial age.