Ebru Sönmez' study deals with two developments that were of central significance for Ottoman history in the sixteenth century and beyond. Both of them continue to be hot button issues after almost five hundred years: the incorporation of northern, southern, and western Kurdistan into the Ottoman Empire and the assumption of a staunchly Sunni identity by the Ottomans in response to the political threat posed by the Safavids who claimed a Shi'ite identity. Sönmez' book is centered on Idris Bidlisi (d. 1520),