Tolga U. Esmer

This project explores the ways in which one Muslim rebel-turned-notable, Kara Feyzi, and his social network negotiated power, piety, and economic resources with other local Christians, Muslims, and the Ottoman "state" during their widespread rebellions in Ottoman Bulgaria from 1795 to 1839. This micro-history focuses on that network's cultural and social practices as well as on competing contemporary discourses on banditry and rebellion. The agency of individual Muslims and Christians, the Ottoman government's intervention into provincial social order, and local communal politics converged to redraw the boundaries of moral and political communities in the Balkans prior to the emergence of the Balkan nation-state and nationalism.