Forgotten Experts offers a history of Ottoman court astrologers and traces their shifting authority and prestige over the long sixteenth century. These individuals served the Ottoman court with their expertise in mathematical, astronomical, and astrological sciences, distinguishing themselves from other occult practitioners and esoteric specialists. While both prophecy and prognostication are attempts to map the terrain of the future, the astrologers' work did not claim spiritual weight as a prophecy but relied instead on methods of prediction developed from data and patterns elaborated through technical and scientific writings.

A. Tunç Şen is Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University, specializing in the social and cultural history of the early modern Ottoman Empire and its place in the wider Eurasian world. He earned his B.A. and M.A. from Sabancı University in Istanbul, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. Before joining Columbia, Şen taught Ottoman history and paleography at Leiden University. Şen’s research delves into how Ottoman subjects perceived their world—shaping and shaped by political, social, economic, and emotional frameworks. His first book, Forgotten Experts: Astrologers, Science, and Authority in the Ottoman Empire, 1450–1600, published by Stanford University Press in 2025, examines the contested role of astrologers in forming scientific expertise at the Ottoman court. His other published work includes studies on the history of science and divination, manuscript culture, the history of emotions, and the social history of scholarship and education in the Ottoman world. He is currently working on two additional book projects: one on early modern Ottoman education and scholarly life through emotional and microhistorical lenses, and another tracing the journey of Ottoman manuscripts into European collections.