Drawing on a wide range of literary and archival sources, Selim Güngörürler's The Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran, 1639–1682: Diplomacy and Borderlands in the Early Modern Middle East offers a detailed reconstruction of Ottoman-Safavid diplomacy and interstate relations during the four decades following the Peace of Zuhab. Challenging the prevailing historiographical assumption that this period was marked by calm and diplomatic inactivity, Güngörürler demonstrates that it was not a time devoid of interaction or tension, but rather one of sustained engagement. He argues that the two empires remained deeply involved in a highly structured courtly diplomacy, encompassing the exchange of missions and letters as well as the careful management of recurring border crises that tested the peace. The book contends that this diplomacy was substantive rather than merely ceremonial, and that both empires actively pursued strategic advantage in the borderlands, all while preserving the formal appearance of friendship and reaffirming an interstate hierarchy predicated on Ottoman primacy.

The book comprises four chapters. Chapter 1 offers an overview of the structural dynamics and foundational principles that governed Ottoman-Safavid détente between 1639 and 1682. A central theme emphasized throughout this section—and indeed the book as a whole—is the principle of Ottoman hierarchical primacy, which underpinned bilateral relations. In this system, the Ottoman dynasty was accorded supreme imperial status, while the Safavid counterpart was recognized as holding a kingly or otherwise subordinate rank. This disparity shaped every aspect of diplomatic practice, from the titles and tone employed in official correspondence to the rank of envoys and functionaries involved in exchanged missions. The Safavids’ acceptance of their junior status was a direct reflection of the power asymmetry between the two empires. As the weaker party, the Safavids were largely committed to preserving peace, often at considerable cost. For the Ottomans, by contrast, relations with the Safavids were secondary to their European engagements and were conducted from a position of relative strength. The chapter also highlights the frontier not as a static boundary but as a dynamic zone of interaction, where local actors played crucial roles in sustaining multifaceted engagements between Constantinople and Isfahan during peacetime. Simultaneously, Ottoman-Safavid diplomacy reveals the deep cultural entanglements between the two courts. Officials on both sides were well-versed in both Persian and Ottoman Turkish across conversational and literary registers and employed a broadly standardized Arabo-Persian diplomatic vocabulary in official correspondence.

The remaining three chapters of the book are organized chronologically. Chapter 2 offers a focused analysis of the immediate aftermath of the 1639 truce, concentrating on the years 1639–1643. It traces the complex and protracted process of ratifying and promulgating the Protocol of Zuhab into a formal treaty, following the Ottoman reconquest of Baghdad. The chapter highlights the initial priorities of military withdrawal and border stabilization, while emphasizing that a de jure state of war centered on contested claims to Iraq persisted for several years after the cessation of hostilities. This ongoing tension underscored the asymmetry of interest between the defeated Safavids, who urgently sought peace, and the victorious Ottomans, who dictated terms from a position of strength. The chapter documents the intense diplomatic activity that followed, including the exchange of ambassadors, envoys, and official correspondence; espionage operations; clandestine negotiations; and even high-level political executions. These efforts were further complicated by disputes over border demarcation and repeated violations of the peace. Despite these challenges, the Ottomans consistently asserted their imperial primacy, even following the death of Sultan Murad IV and the accession of his mentally unstable brother, Sultan Ibrahim.

Chapter 3 explores developments from 1644–1660, a period during which the Treaty of Zuhab remained fully operational. During these years, the Safavids repeatedly declined overtures from Ottoman adversaries—such as the Republic of Venice—to participate in anti-Ottoman coalitions, viewing continued peace as strategically advantageous given the relative strength of the Ottoman Empire. The chapter underscores several instances of Ottoman military assertiveness, including the establishment of strategic commands in Erzurum (1646) and Van (1656), as well as the positioning of troops along the frontier. Such displays of force likely reinforced Safavid caution and highlighted the fundamental asymmetry that underpinned the post-Zuhab détente. Yet, despite these tensions, the two empires occasionally cooperated on matters concerning Mughal India and the Bukharan Uzbek Khanate. Persistent challenges nevertheless arose in peripheral zones—especially in the Persian Gulf and the frontier regions of Armenia and Azerbaijan—where local dynamics, internal unrest, and divergent interpretations of the Treaty of Zuhab with regard to border settlement contributed to episodic friction. These disputes, however, were managed through diplomatic channels and did not escalate into open warfare. The Persian Gulf hinterland, in particular, constituted a recurrent point of contention, owing to the activities of local actors who sought to exploit the rivalry between the two imperial powers. A salient example of such localized volatility is what the author refers to as “the first full-blown Basran crisis” of 1654. Internal dissension within the Basran principality ultimately precipitated Ottoman intervention from Baghdad, which was resisted by an anti-Ottoman faction bolstered by warriors recruited from Iran. The ensuing conflict resulted in the reconfiguration of the principality's status—from a tributary polity into a hereditary fiefdom formally subsumed within the Ottoman provincial framework.

Chapter 4 examines the final phase of the détente, spanning 1660–1682, during which imperial entanglements increasingly shifted toward the southern frontier, particularly the Basran region. Basra remained a locus of instability, experiencing three Bedouin uprisings in the 1660s, each supported by troops recruited from Iran. In response, the Ottomans launched three successive imperial campaigns, ultimately annexing Basra as a formal province. While these conflicts placed considerable strain on Ottoman-Safavid relations, the grand viziers of both empires exchanged letters in 1666 affirming their mutual commitment to the preservation of amicable ties. The Ottomans further demonstrated their strategic reach by maintaining secondary armies in the Persian Gulf theater, even while engaged in large-scale campaigns in Europe and the Mediterranean. At the same time, the Ottoman court exercised caution, refraining from precipitous action based on unverified intelligence from the border for fear of provoking war with Iran. The Safavid court, for its part, reiterated its commitment to peace by repatriating fugitives and withholding future support from anti-Ottoman factions. The crisis sparked by the Bedouin coalition uprising in southern Iraq ultimately led to the reaffirmation of the Peace of Zuhab through the reissuance of Shah Safi's 1639 writ of pledge between the summer of 1674 and March 1675, underscoring the continued centrality of the treaty framework in managing border tensions.

Overall, the book explicitly sets out to examine Ottoman-Safavid diplomacy and political relations between 1639 and 1682, a period the author characterizes as a “historiographical lacuna” in existing scholarship. Its claim to originality rests chiefly on presenting new empirical findings derived from previously underutilized primary source materials. In pursuit of this empirical focus, the author appears to have made a deliberate choice to minimize engagement with secondary literature, offering little in the way of sustained historiographical analysis or critical dialogue with existing interpretations. Also absent is a thorough methodological discussion of the primary sources underpinning the study. Apart from brief acknowledgments that much Ottoman-Safavid correspondence from this period was either never committed to writing or has since been lost, the text offers limited reflection on source limitations, archival gaps, or interpretive challenges. While this narrative strategy may be intended to foreground the originality of the findings and enhance the readability of the text, it simultaneously complicates efforts to situate the study within broader historiographical debates or evaluate its methodological foundations in a rigorous manner. The absence of a sustained comparative or longue durée perspective—beyond occasional cursory remarks—similarly limits the reader's ability to assess which developments in the period under consideration were historically specific and which aligned with broader patterns of early modern diplomacy.

The author also explicitly excludes matters of trade and religious affairs from the scope of the volume, noting that these themes are addressed elsewhere. While this is a justifiable methodological decision, it nonetheless forecloses opportunities to contextualize the findings within larger questions about Ottoman-Safavid relations, particularly with regard to religion. One especially salient omission concerns the Kızılbaş order, whose history has been the subject of significant recent scholarly attention. Although the author references the Kızılbaş occasionally in footnotes, the text does not substantively engage with these newer insights. A particularly noteworthy case is the appointment of members of the Kızılbaş military-political nobility, specifically, in one instance, a khalīfatu'l-khulafā—the shah’s deputy-chieftain of the Safavid Sufi order charged with mediating between the Safavids and Kızılbaş communities in Anatolia—as Safavid ambassadors to the Ottoman court. Such appointments may suggest that the Ottoman authorities tacitly recognized these khalīfas as legitimate religious functionaries, lending weight to revisionist interpretations that view Kızılbaş khalīfas not merely as agents of sedition but as acknowledged intermediaries of a trans-imperial Sufi network. This is a potentially significant insight that the author leaves underdeveloped. Finally, a relatively minor issue concerns the author's preference for placing original-language technical terms in the footnotes, which requires frequent reference to the endnotes and may disrupt the reading experience for some.

None of these critiques, however, should detract from the overall value of this deeply researched, source-driven study, which sheds important light on a notably understudied phase of Ottoman-Safavid relations. The book's primary strength lies in its detailed reconstruction of diplomatic and political interactions, with particular emphasis on structural dynamics and the evolving nature of frontier engagement during a period of formal peace. As such, it represents a significant contribution not only to the study of Ottoman-Safavid relations but also to the broader field of early modern diplomatic history in the Islamicate world. It is poised to become a key reference for scholars working on Ottoman-Iranian relations, borderland studies, and early modern inter-imperial diplomacy.