Dr. Hacı Osman (Ozzy) Gündüz is a winner of the 2025 Alwaleed Bin Talal Dissertation Prize in Islamic Studies for his dissertation, "A Rūmī in the Lands of Shām: Life, Poetry, and Legacy of a Janissary-Turned-Poet Māmayya al-Rūmī (d. 985–7 / 1577–9)." Ozzy talks about his interests in Arabic literature during the Ottoman era, often considered a period of inḥiṭāṭ, or decline, in which Arabic literature came to be decadent, imitative, and lacking creativity. Ozzy challenges the decline narrative and conducts a micro-history of Māmayya al-Rūmī, an Arabic poet of non-Arab origin, whose poetry Ozzy analyzes on its own terms and within the context of the literary milieu of 16th century Damascus. Māmayya al-Rūmī's poetry spans a vast range, including panegyrics to rulers and scholars, multi-lingual macaronic poems, chronograms, ...