When he began his training at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Bogac Ergene didn’t expect to become a leading authority on Islamic law. His passion was economics, an interest that took him to the London School of Economics for a master’s, then back to METU for further study in the discipline.
. . . Many years, publications and awards later, Ergene, an associate professor of history at UVM who directs the university’s Middle East Studies program, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Ottoman Empire -- a vast kingdom centered in Istanbul that stretched from the Balkans to northern Africa.
[To read the entire article, follow the link above or click here.]