CEMS is delighted to announce that this year's CEMS Best MA Thesis Award goes to Ahmet Baran Demir for his master's thesis titled “Debating Cash Waqfs: A Case Study on Scholarly Communication in the Ottoman Legal Sphere in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” and supervised by Professor Tijana Krstić.
In the words of praise by Grigor Boykov (University of Vienna), the external reader of Ahmet's thesis,
"Ahmet Baran Demir’s thesis examines the debate on the legality of endowing cash in the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire, a topic whose historical, legal, and socio-economic importance has long attracted considerable scholarly attention. The principal strength of the thesis lies in the originality of its perspective. Rather than revisiting and focusing exclusively on the legal arguments of [the key Ottioman intellectuals participating in this debate], Demir shifts attention to the mechanisms of scholarly communication and textual transmission. This approach allows him to make a meaningful contribution not only to the history of Ottoman legal culture, but also to the growing scholarship on manuscript circulation, readership, and intellectual networks. The most significant contribution of the thesis lies in its discussion of miscellanies (mecmû‘as), as it demonstrates how the reception of the debate evolved over time and how later writers grouped these texts together with other works, thereby opening important perspectives on the afterlife of the debate within different intellectual and social milieus."
CEMS also warmly congratulates Ahmet on his admission to the PhD program at the European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy!
We are honored to have had you as a CEMS member and we wish you the absolute best in your academic and personal endeavors!