Sabri Ates

Biography

Sabri Ates is a historian of the modern Middle East whose work centers on the history of the Kurds and Kurdistan, Iran, and the Ottoman Empire. His research explores questions of nationalism, empire, border-making, and political agency across these interconnected regions.

His academic journey began with an examination of the Ottoman intellectual °Õ³Ü²Ô²¹±ôı Hilmi Bey, whose transformation from a pluralist reformer to a fervent nationalist offered a compelling lens through which to view the shifting political and intellectual landscape of a declining empire. This research, completed with contributions from Dr. Ahmet Demirel, culminated in Ates’s first book, °Õ³Ü²Ô²¹±ôı Hilmi Bey: °¿²õ³¾²¹²Ô±ôı»å²¹²Ô Cumhuriyete Bir Aydın (Ä°letiÅŸim ³Û²¹²âı²Ô±ô²¹°ùı, 2009).

His second monograph, Ottoman-Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary, 1843–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), investigates the creation and enforcement of borders—specifically the long and contested process of establishing the Ottoman-Iranian (and present-day Iraqi) boundary. Drawing from Ottoman, Iranian, British, and Russian sources, the book reveals how this seventy-year project reshaped both state sovereignty and the daily lives of communities divided by the new boundary.

Ates’s current major project, a study of the 1880 Shaykh Ubeydullah Uprising, examines the first Kurdish uprising aimed at establishing a Kurdish state by uniting Ottoman and Iranian Kurds. In challenging dehumanizing narratives that portray Kurdish resistance as mere foreign provocation, the project highlights Kurdish political consciousness and agency. Based on extensive archival research—including Ottoman, Iranian, British, and American missionary records—it explores how and why ordinary Kurds rose against imperial authority in pursuit of justice and self-determination.

Selected Publications

Books:

• The Ottoman-Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary, 1843-1914, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). (Turkish translation: Istanbul:Küre³Û²¹²âı²Ô±ô²¹°ùı, 2020. Persian Translation forthcoming).
• °¿²õ³¾²¹²Ô±ôı»å²¹²ÔCumhuriyeteBir Aydın:°Õ³Ü²Ô²¹±ôıHilmi Bey, [An Intellectual from Empire to the Republic:°Õ³Ü²Ô²¹±ôıHilmi Bey] (Ä°stanbul: Tarih³Õ²¹°ì´ÚıYurt³Û²¹²âı²Ô±ô²¹°ùı, 2009).

Articles:

• “Historical Transformation of the Ottoman-Iranian Boundaries,” Idea of Iran, ed. Charles Melville, Bloomsbury Publishers. (Submitted, forthcoming)
  
  
• “We the Nation: On Five Letters of Shaykh ‘Ubeydullah Nehrî,” Kurdish Studies Journal, 2 (2024), 3-32.
  
  
• Ates-Vural Genç, Sabri. "Ottoman-Safavid Relations: A Religious or Political Rivalry" in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Ed. David Ludden. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.

• “The End of Kurdish Autonomy: The Destruction of Kurdish Emirates in the Ottoman Empire,” in Bozarslan, Hamit, et al. The Cambridge History of the Kurds (Cambridge University Press, 2021.

• “1639 Treaty of Zohab: Foundational Myth or Foundational Document,”Iranian Studies, vol. 52: 3-4, May-July 2019. (Translated into Persian, by Nasrollah Salehi, Faslnameh-e Tarikh-eMoaser-e Iran, 2023)

• “Shi’i-Sunni Differences and the Emergence of the Ottoman-Iranian Border,” in The Journal of Turkish Studies (China), 1 (2018): 97-121

• “The Sheikh Ubeidullah Rebellion of 1880,” in Kurdish Question Revisited, ed. Gareth Stansfield, (London: Hurst & Co, 2017)

• Co-Author, “General Introduction,”Records of the Kurds: Territory, Revolt, and Nationalism, (Cambridge: Cambridge Archive Editions, 2015).

• “In the name of the caliph and the nation: The Sheikh Ubeidullah Rebellion of 1880-81” in Iranian Studies, (2014), Vol. 47, No. 5, 735-798.

• Millet ve HalifeYolunda: ½¢±ð²â³ó&²Ô²ú²õ±è;Ubeydullah-e Nehri Isyanı, I, II, III, Kürt Tarih Dergisi, Numbers. 7, 8, 9, 2013.

• “Bones of Contention: Corpse Traffic and the Ottoman-Iranian Rivalry in Iraq” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, (Duke University Press), Vol. 30, No. 3, (2010), 512-532. Persian translation by Nazli Kamvari, in Irannameh 26, 2010, no. 1-2, pp. 1-30.] Turkish translation by Burcu Kurt, in Burcu Kurt and Ismail Yasayanlar, (eds.) °¿²õ³¾²¹²Ô±ôı»å²¹²Ô Cumhuriyet’e ³§²¹±ô²µÄ±²Ô&²Ô²ú²õ±è;±á²¹²õ³Ù²¹±ôı°ì±ô²¹°ùve Halk ³§²¹ÄŸ±ôığı, (Istanbul: Tarih³Õ²¹°ì´ÚıYurt³Û²¹²âı²Ô±ô²¹°ùı, 2017)

• “°Õ³Ü²Ô²¹±ôıHilmi Bey,” ToplumsalTarih, ³§²¹²âı187, Temmuz 2009.

• “Oryantalizmve Bizim DoÄŸu” (Orientalism and “Our East”), ¶Ù´ÇÄŸ³Ü»å²¹²Ô, Vol. 1, Issue 1, September 2007.

• “The Ottoman Archives as a Source for the Study of Qajar Iran,”Iranian Studies, Volume 37, number 3, September 2004, 499-509. (Translated into Persian and published in Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies (Faslnameh-e Tarikh-e Moaser-e Iran), No. 35/pp.79- 96.

Awards, Fellowships, and Grants

• 2017-2018 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
• 2016 Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics, Faculty Incentive Grant
• 2015 ºìÌÒÓ°ÊÓ Center for Presidential History Writing Fellowship (Spring 2015)
• 2014 Godbey Book Award, ºìÌÒÓ°ÊÓ
• 2012-2013 Dean’s Research Council Grant, ºìÌÒÓ°ÊÓ
• 2012-2013 Texas Project for Human Rights Education Fellow
• 2009-10 Koç University (Istanbul), Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations Senior Residential Fellowship
• 2009-10 ARIT (American Research Institute in Turkey), Joukowsky Family Foundation, John Freely Fellowship
• 2009-10 University Research Council Grant, ºìÌÒÓ°ÊÓ
• 2006 Middle East Studies Association, Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in Humanities
• 2006 HOPE Teaching Award, ºìÌÒÓ°ÊÓ
• 2003 Dean’s Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, New York University
• 2001-2002 ARIT, Dissertation Fellowship
• 2001 Dean’s Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, New York University
• 2000 SCOS Fellowship, Cambridge University