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Drawing on surviving documents from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State provides a revisionist approach to the study of the formative years of the Ottoman Empire. Challenging the predominant view that a desire to spread Islam accounted for Ottoman success during the fourteenth-century advance into Southeastern Europe, Lowry argues that the primary motivation was a desire for booty and slaves. The early Ottomans were a plundering confederacy, open to anyone (Muslim or Christian) who could meaningfully contribute to this goal. It was this lack of a strict religious orthodoxy, and a willingness to preserve local customs and practices, that allowed the Ottomans to gain and maintain support. Later accounts were written to buttress what had become the self-image of the dynasty following its incorporation of the heartland of the Islamic world in the sixteenth century.
This book studies the functions and responsibilities of Islamic courts and explores the processes of adjudication and dispute resolution in the context of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Ottoman Anatolia.
First Published in 2004. Modernizing Muscovy is a comprehensive account of seventeenth-century Russian history. It rejects the traditional interpretation of this era as the twilight of the Russian Middle Ages. By revealing important instances of dynamic change in the late Muscovite state, economy, and society, the book demonstrates the crucial importance of pre-Petrine reform in Russia’s transition to one of the great powers of the world. The book’s broad scope makes it a veritable encyclopaedia of late Muscovite history. It both synthesizes previous scholarship and breaks new ground in many important areas.
"Newsom’s commentary offers a fresh study of Daniel in its historical context. Newsom further analyzes Daniel from literary and theological perspectives. With her expert commentary, Newsom’s study will be the definitive commentary on Daniel for many years to come." -- Amazon
Between 1400 and 1878, the majority of Southern Slavic peoples endured several centuries of Ottoman rule. In the nineteenth century there was a movement among both the Croats and the Serbs to set aside regional, ethnic, religious, and cultural differences in order to work together toward the liberation of all the Southern Slavs from the Ottoman yoke. These volumes explore how the masterpieces of two leading poets among the Croats and Serbs - Ivan Mazuranić (1814-1890) and Petar II Petrović Njegos (1813-1851), who was Prince-Bishop of Montenegro from 1830-1851 - dealt with the Southern Slavs' relationship to Islam in their greatest poetic works, The Death of Smail-agha Čengić and The Mountain Wreath, respectively.
Did the ‘seventeenth-century crisis’ visit the Ottoman Empire? How can we situate the explosion of rural violence and the rebellions of the turn of the seventeenth century in the Anatolian countryside? The Collapse of Rural Order in Ottoman Anatolia provides the reader with a fresh and innovative perspective on the long scholarly debate over the question of ‘decline’ in early modern Ottoman history. It offers a new agenda, new type of source material, and a new methodology for the study of demographic crisis. Through a systematic examination of little-known detailed avârız registers, Oktay Özel demonstrates in detail the mass desertion of rural settlements, the destruction of agricultural economy, and the resulting collapse of rural order in Ottoman Anatolia at the turn of the seventeenth century.
This book is dedicated to Claudia Römer and brings together 33 contributions spanning a period from the 15th to the 20th century and covering the wide range of topics with which the honouree is engaged. The volume is divided into six parts that present current research on language, literature, and style as well as newer approaches and perspectives in dealing with sources and terminologies. Aspects such as conquest, administration, and financing of provinces are found as well as problems of endowments and the circulation of goods in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Another main topic is dedicated to minorities and their role and situation in various provinces and cities of the Ottoman Empire, as represented by various sources. But also topics like conversion, morality and control are illuminated. Finally, the volume provides an insight into the late Ottoman and early republican period, in which some previously unpublished sources (such as travel letters, memoirs) are presented and (re)discussed. The book is not only aimed at scholars and students of the Ottoman Empire; the thematic range is also of interest to linguists, historians, and cultural historians.
This book is a comparative study of imperial organization and longevity that assesses Ottoman successes as well as failures against those of other empires with similar characteristics. Barkey examines the Ottoman Empire's social organization and mechanisms of rule at key moments of its history, emergence, imperial institutionalization, remodeling, and transition to nation-state, revealing how the empire managed these moments, adapted, and averted crises and what changes made it transform dramatically. The flexible techniques by which the Ottomans maintained their legitimacy, the cooperation of their diverse elites both at the center and in the provinces, as well as their control over economic and human resources were responsible for the longevity of this particular 'negotiated empire'. Her analysis illuminates topics that include imperial governance, imperial institutions, imperial diversity and multiculturalism, the manner in which dissent is handled and/or internalized, and the nature of state society negotiations.
Modern life in increasingly heterogeneous societies has directed attention to patterns of interaction, often using a framework of persecution and tolerance. This study of the economic, social, legal and religious position of three minorities (Jews, Muslims and pagan Turkic nomads) argues that different degrees of exclusion and integration characterized medieval non-Christian status in the medieval Christian kingdom of Hungary between 1000 and 1300. A complex explanation of non-Christian status emerges from the analysis of their economic, social, legal and religious positions and roles. Existence on the frontier with the nomadic world led to the formulation of a frontier ideology, and to anxiety about Hungary's detachment from Christendom, which affected policies towards non-Christians. The study also succeeds in integrating central European history with the study of the medieval world, while challenging such current concepts in medieval studies as frontier societies, persecution and tolerance, ethnicity and 'the other'.
New perspectives on the Ottoman Empire, challenging Western stereotypes.