ANAMED Library Talks continue on June 9 with A. Tunç Şen. The title of the talk is “Forgotten Experts: Astrologers, Science, and Authority in the Ottoman Empire, 1450-1600”.
‘Forgotten Experts’ explores the world of Ottoman court astrologers and traces their shifting authority and prestige over the long sixteenth century. Far from mystical fortune-tellers and unlettered charlatans, these adepts in mathematical, astronomical and astrological sciences relied on data-driven methods to predict the future, which distinguished their work from prophecy or spiritual revelation. By following the fluctuating careers and competence of court astrologers as practitioners of a contested science, the talk offers insight into the relations between expertise and statecraft and into the nuances of “occult sciences” in the early modern Ottoman and wider Islamic imperial context. This month’s talk will be online. Please click on the link below to register.
About the speaker:
A. Tunç Şen is Associate Professor of History at Columbia University, where he teaches courses on Ottoman history, the history of science and manuscript studies. His research focuses on the social and cultural history of intellectual practices in the late medieval and early modern Ottoman world. He is currently writing his second monograph, ‘The Fragile: A Social and Emotional History of Knowledge in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire’, which explores what happens to the (inner) lives of students and scholars when a state turns learning and the academy into a centrally administered, hierarchical and rigidly ranked career structure.
Online talk
Date: June 9, 2026, 6.00 - 8.00 PM
