Cemal Kafadar
{{Short description|Turkish academic and historian (born 1954)}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Cemal Kafadar
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1954|8|15}}{{cn|date=April 2025}}
| birth_place = Istanbul, Turkey
| death_date =
| death_place =
| fields = History of the Ottoman Empire
| workplaces = Harvard University
Princeton University
| education = Hamilton College (BA)
McGill University (MA, PhD)
| awards = Presidential Culture and Arts Grand Awards (2010)
| website = {{URL|https://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/cemal-kafadar}}
}}
Cemal Kafadar (born 1954{{Cn|date=April 2025}}) is a Turkish scholar and historian. He is a Professor of History, the Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies in the Department of History, and the director of the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University (CMES).
In March 2025, during what the Crimson described as "a mounting pressure campaign by the Trump administration" and concerns about CMES' "programming on Israel and Palestine", Harvard dismissed Kafadar as director of CMES, effective at the end of the academic year.{{Cite web |title=Harvard Dismisses Leaders of Center for Middle Eastern Studies |url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/3/29/harvard-cmes-director-departure/ |access-date=2025-04-18 |website=The Harvard Crimson}}{{Cite news |last=Patel |first=Vimal |date=2025-03-29 |title=Leaders of Harvard's Middle Eastern Studies Center Will Leave |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/us/leaders-of-harvards-middle-eastern-studies-center-will-leave.html |access-date=2025-04-01 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}
Kafadar graduated from Robert College, then Hamilton College, and received his PhD from the McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies in 1987 and taught for two years in Princeton's Near Eastern Studies department before going to Harvard.{{Cite news|url=http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1997/12.04/ChairinTurkishS.html|title=Harvard Gazette - Cemal Kafadar|work=Harvard Gazette|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604123349/http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1997/12.04/ChairinTurkishS.html|archive-date=2011-06-04|url-status=dead}} Kafadar teaches{{When|date=April 2025}} seminars related to popular culture, hagiography and Ottoman historiography as well as the early modern history of the Middle East and Balkans.{{cite web |url=http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/kafadar.php |title=Harvard University History Department - Faculty: Cemal Kafadar |accessdate=2009-11-05 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091225075921/http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/kafadar.php |archive-date=2009-12-25 }} He is a member of the editorial board of the Historians of the Ottoman Empire{{Cite web |title=Home {{!}} Historians of the Ottoman Empire |url=https://ottomanhistorians.uchicago.edu/ |access-date=2025-04-18 |website=ottomanhistorians.uchicago.edu}} and was a member of the jury of the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival in 2009.{{cite web|url=http://www.altinportakal.org.tr/|title=nic.tr: alan adı duraklatılmış..|website=www.altinportakal.org.tr|access-date=2009-11-05|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180901080538/http://www.altinportakal.org.tr/|archive-date=2018-09-01|url-status=dead}} He is an honorary member of the Turkish Historical Society.{{cite web |title=Şeref Üyeleri |url=https://www.ttk.gov.tr/kurumsal/ttkuyeleri/seref-uyeleri/ |accessdate=22 April 2020 |website=www.ttk.gov.tr |publisher=THS |language=tr}}
He is the author of the book Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (1995).{{Cite web|url=https://www.amazon.com/Books-Cemal-Kafadar/s?rh=n:283155,p_27:Cemal+Kafadar|title=Amazon.com|website=www.amazon.com|accessdate=19 November 2022}}{{Cite web|title=Cemal Kafadar|url=https://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/cemal-kafadar|access-date=2020-11-27|website=history.fas.harvard.edu|language=en}}
Selected publications
- {{ cite journal | last=Kafadar | first=Cemal | year=1989 | title=Self and others: the diary of a dervish in seventeenth century Istanbul and first-person narratives in Ottoman literature | journal=Studia Islamica | volume=69 | issue=69 | pages=121–150 | doi=10.2307/1596070 | jstor=1596070 }}
- {{ cite journal | last=Kafadar | first=Cemal | year=1991 | title=On the purity and corruption of the janissaries | journal=Turkish Studies Association Bulletin | volume=15 | issue=2 | pages=273–280 | jstor=43385269 }}
- {{cite book | editor1-last=İnalcık | editor1-first=Halil | editor1-link=Halil İnalcık | editor2-last=Kafadar | editor2-first=Cemal | year=1993 | title=Sülaymân the Second and His Time | location=Istanbul | publisher=Isis Press | isbn=978-975-428-052-4 | url=https://archive.org/stream/SULEYMAN2/SULEYMAN-THE-SECOND-AND-HIS-TIME }}
- {{cite book | last=Kafadar | first=Cemal | year=1995 | title=Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State | location=Berkeley, CA | publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-20600-7 }}
- {{ cite journal | last=Kafadar | first=Cemal | year=1999 | title=The question of Ottoman decline | journal=Harvard Middle East and Islamic Review | volume=4 | issue=1–2 | pages=30–75 }}
- {{ cite book | last=Kafadar | first=Cemal | year=2009 | title=Kim Var İmiş Biz Burada Yoğ İken Dört Osmanlı: Yeniçeri, Tüccar, Derviş ve Hatun | language=tr | location=Istanbul | publisher=Metis | isbn=978-975-342-706-7 }}
- Gülru Necipoğlu, Cemal Kafadar, and Cornell Fleischer, eds. (2019). Treasures of Knowledge. An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3–1503/4). 2 vols. Leiden: Brill.{{Cite book|url=https://brill.com/view/title/55202|title=Treasures of Knowledge: An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3-1503/4) (2 vols): Volume I: Essays / Volume II: Transliteration and Facsimile "Register of Books" (Kitāb al-kutub), MS Török F. 59; Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtára Keleti Gyűjtemény (Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences)|date=2019-08-12|publisher=Brill|isbn=978-90-04-40250-8|language=en}}