Astrologers and Authority in the Ottoman Empire

with A. Tunç Şen

hosted by Maryam Patton

| What did it mean to know the future in the early modern Ottoman Empire? And who had the authority to interpret the heavens? In this episode, A. Tunç Şen discusses his new book Forgotten Experts: Astrologers, Science, and Authority in the Ottoman Empire, 1450–1600. Şen takes us into the world of Ottoman court munajjims—astral experts whose work combined mathematical astronomy, astrological interpretation, and political counsel—and uncovers the roles they fulfilled within the Ottoman court bureaucracy. They advised rulers and officials not usually on whether something should happen, but on when, including the auspicious timing of military campaigns, building projects, ceremonies, and other acts of state. Their authority rested on technical skill, especially the ability to calculate planetary positions and the ascendant, as well as on a broader cosmological understanding of how the heavens shaped events on earth. Under Bayezid II, munajjims enjoyed unusual prestige and high salaries, reflecting the sultan’s own interest in astronomy, mathematics, and philosophical kingship. Under Süleyman, however, their standing declined, while other forms of esoteric expertise, such as geomancy and letterism, became more prominent. By following the salaries, writings, frustrations, and ambitions of Ottoman munajjims, Şen reconstructs a social history of scientific authority in the early modern Ottoman Empire.   

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What did it mean to know the future in the early modern Ottoman Empire? And who had the authority to interpret the heavens? In this episode, A. Tunç Şen discusses his new book Forgotten Experts: Astrologers, Science, and Authority in the Ottoman Empire, 1450–1600. Şen takes us into the world of Ottoman court munajjims—astral experts whose work combined mathematical astronomy, astrological interpretation, and political counsel—and uncovers the roles they fulfilled within the Ottoman court bureaucracy. They advised rulers and officials not usually on whether something should happen, but on when, including the auspicious timing of military campaigns, building projects, ceremonies, and other acts of state. Their authority rested on technical skill, especially the ability to calculate planetary positions and the ascendant, as well as on a broader cosmological understanding of how the heavens shaped events on earth. Under Bayezid II, munajjims enjoyed unusual prestige and high salaries, reflecting the sultan’s own interest in astronomy, mathematics, and philosophical kingship. Under Süleyman, however, their standing declined, while other forms of esoteric expertise, such as geomancy and letterism, became more prominent. By following the salaries, writings, frustrations, and ambitions of Ottoman munajjims, Şen reconstructs a social history of scientific authority in the early modern Ottoman Empire.

Contributor Bios

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 intellectual, social, and cultural history of the early modern Ottoman world. His first book, Forgotten Experts: Astrologers, Science, and Authority in the Ottoman Empire, 1450–1600, was published by Stanford University Press in 2025.

Maryam Patton is Assistant Professor of History at Wesleyan University. Her research interests span the cultural and intellectual history of the late medieval and early modern Ottoman Empire, the history and theories of time and temporality, and cross-cultural transmission in the Mediterranean world, among others. She received her PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University and is preparing her first book on the Ottoman conception of time.

Credits

Episode No. 591

Release Date: 14 August 2026

Sound production by Maryam Patton

Music: "Clean Soul" Kevin MacLeod

Images and bibliography courtesy of A. Tunç Şen

Further Listening

	Nir Shafir	400 2/2/19	Forging Islamic Science
	Helen Pfeifer	524 3/27/22	Scholarly Salons in 16th-Century Damascus
	Harun Küçük	456 3/25/20	Science in Early Modern Istanbul
	Emine Fetvacı	222 1/27/16	Picturing History at the Ottoman Court
	Justin Stearns	535 12/14/22	The Natural Sciences in Early Modern Morocco
	Orhan Pamuk & Nükhet Varlık	396 1/3/19	Imagining and Narrating Plague in the Ottoman World

Images

Celestial map from Seyyid Lokman’s Zubdat al-tavārīkh, 1585–1590, Chester Beatty Library, MS T. 414, fol. 16b.



A munajjim observes the comet of 1577. Gelibolulu Mustafa Ālī, Nuṣretnāme, 1584, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, MS. H.1365, fol. 6b.

Select Bibliography

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