The Aqquyunlu – and subsequent Ottoman and Mamluk – adaptation of the Timurid vocabulary of sovereignty does not suggest that these sultanates lacked terminological innovation in their own right. In fact, many of the polities of the fifteenth century, and perhaps particularly the Aqquyunlu, were concerned with developing innovative titles to describe their sovereignty.1 To be sure, such innovations shared the basic presuppositions of the Timurid vocabulary of sovereignty of the early fifteenth century. In most instances, the terminology and its underlying epistemological references rejected, or at least sidestepped, juridical or genealogical definitions of sovereignty, which tended to exclude the legitimating claims of the men who actually wielded political authority in the fifteenth century. As we have seen in , Timurid strategies for legitimation sought to bolster claims to authority through the divine or cosmic favor shown to Timurid princes. These arguments, in contrast to the relatively staid and constricting juridical and genealogical parameters developed by legal scholars and the upholders of Chinggisid tradition, drew upon a wide array of astrological, mystical, philosophical, and occult doctrines and freely mixed ideas from these varied traditions to create a compelling and universalizing conception of kingship.

Bidlisi, Shah Qasim Tabrizi, and the other Persian émigré secretaries introduced in these pages shared certain features of educational upbringing, professional experience, and political outlook that suggest their participation in a distinct bureaucratic subculture within the Ottoman court in the first decades of the sixteenth century. Their experiences as valued contributors to Ottoman chancery, administrative, and literary products were central to the trajectory of Ottoman imperial ideology at a critical juncture in the history of the sultanate. More generally, perhaps as a consequence of their insistence on Persian for the articulation of such ideology, these secretaries had a role in the emergence of a confident Ottoman imperial idiom that accepted the literary sensibilities of the Persian chancery style, even if ultimately it settled upon Ottoman Turkish as the principal language of refined communication and belles lettres. Their experiences are also key to approaching again the question first raised at the beginning of this book: Wherefrom did the widespread and novel discourse on sacral and cosmic kingship of the sixteenth century originate and how did it come to be a common feature of kingship among the major Muslim empires of the sixteenth century?

Despite the impact of his secretarial work and historical writings on the ideological dimensions of the Ottoman Sultanate in the early sixteenth century, Bidlisi’s legacy sits uncomfortably within the larger frameworks by which modern historians generally assess the development of a distinctly Ottoman tradition of historical writing. To be sure, Bidlisi’s status as a major voice of the dynasty in the reign of Bayezid II is universally affirmed by modern historians, yet his work as historian is all too often mentioned only in passing and with little consideration of precisely what he offered his contemporary readers and subsequent generations of Ottoman historians and litterateurs.

In a broad sense, Bidlisi’s political thought was conditioned by a particular tradition of sovereignty, which had its origins in the career of Timur, was developed through the competing claims of his descendants, and was adapted ultimately to courts throughout the central lands of Islam. In this way, the Timurid expression of sovereignty became a pronounced feature of kingship for all of the major polities of the sixteenth century. Yet the articulation and spread of this conception of sovereignty was not the product of some amorphous and abstract intellectual process. In many instances the adaptation of the Timurid conception of kingship can be traced through the movement of scholars and secretaries from one court to another and the adaptation of a new vocabulary of sovereignty to ever wider political contexts.

The rise of Shah Ismaʿil in Iran in 1501 eventually prompted Bidlisi to make one of the most important decisions of his life. Bidlisi’s exile and migration from Tabriz to Ottoman lands in the following year initiated a fundamental change in the professional trajectory of his life. On a personal level, the loss of his friends, family, and homeland, as well as the sense of alienation he felt in a foreign land remained important themes throughout all of his subsequent autobiographical written remarks. On a professional level, the challenges associated with finding a secure and prosperous footing among the Ottomans represented the most fundamental challenge to Bidlisi’s life between 1502 and 1506.

In the sixteenth century, Muslim rulers of the largest empires of West and South Asia all embraced a new vocabulary of sovereignty that supplemented traditional Perso-Islamic titles and concepts of rule. To be sure, the traditional nomenclature remained. The Ottoman sultan, the Safavid shah, and the Mughal padishah still frequently referred to themselves by titles with long histories in Islamic lands. In all cases, these titles were mutually intelligible across these empires and to a large extent interchangeable in Ottoman Istanbul, Safavid Qazvin or Isfahan, and Mughal Delhi or Fatehpur Sikri. That is to say, on the basis of a long-established and shared cultural heritage, sultan, shah, and padishah were all recognized and accepted markers of sovereignty across a wide expanse between the Balkans and Bengal.1 Yet, in addition to these traditional titles of sovereign authority, alternative claims emerged prominently in the sixteenth century within these three Muslim polities. Such claims powerfully enhanced the older designations. They also often suggested a rationale for rule on a sacral or cosmic universal scale. These emperors were not just preeminent in their own domains, but became sahib-qiran (lord of the auspicious astral conjunction), mujaddid (centennial renewer of the faith), khalifa-yi ilahi (Vicegerent of God), and occasionally mahdi-yi akhir-i zaman (Harbinger of the End Time).

During the first forty years of Idris Bidlisi’s life, Persian lands suffered monumental geopolitical strains that profoundly affected his personal outlook and professional inclinations. During the period between his birth in 1457 and the end of the fifteenth century, Bidlisi’s homeland in western Iran witnessed the rise and fall of a major Turkmen dynasty, the Bayandur clan of the Aqquyunlu confederation, the imperial aspirations of which were shortly followed within a matter of decades by a complete descent into chaos and disorder. The resounding success and subsequent unraveling of the Aqquyunlu experiment shaped the educational, social, and professional opportunities available to Bidlisi. Drawn by the cultural resplendence of the recently ascendant Aqquyunlu court, Bidlisi decided to enter sultanic service as a young man. His professional rise within the court seemed to reflect inversely the more general devolution of Aqquyunlu fortunes in the waning decades of the fifteenth century. By the late 1480s, as Bidlisi entered middle age, he had attained one of the highest offices of state, even as the political instability resulting from years of dynastic conflict and civil war brought the Aqquyunlu polity to the brink of destruction.