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In Ottoman Land Reform in the Province of Baghdad, Keiko Kiyotaki traces the Ottoman reforms of tax farming and land tenure and establishes that their effects were the key ingredients of agricultural progress. These modernizing reforms are shown to be effective because they were compatible with local customs and tribal traditions, which the Ottoman governors worked to preserve. Ottoman rule in Iraq has previously been considered oppressive and blamed with failure to develop the country. Since the British mandate government’s land and tax policies were little examined, the Ottoman legacy has been left unidentified. This book proves that Ottoman land reforms led to increases in agricultural production and tax revenue, while the hasty reforms enacted by the mandate government ignoring indigenous customs caused new agricultural and land problems.
In this important book, Clarence-Smith provides the first general survey of the Islamic debate on slavery. Sweeping away entrenched myths, he hopes to stimulate more research on this neglected topic. He draws on examples from the 'abode of Islam', from the Philippines to Senegal and from the Caucasus to South Africa, paying particular attention to the period from the late eighteenth century to the present. Once slavery had disappeared, it was the Sufi mystics who did most to integrate former slaves socially and religiously, avoiding the deep social divisions that have plagued the Western societies in the aftermath of abolition.
Until recently, the historiography of Middle Eastern economic elites during the first globalization has ignored the significant role played by Muslim tujjār (big merchant-entrepreneurs). Foreign firms and local minorities were considered the prime agents of economic change and the initiators of economic growth. The 12 studies in this volume show that the Muslim tujjār played a major economic role in various regions of the Middle East during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their investments, mainly in commercial agriculture, resulted in economic growth and changed economic structures and social relations in many Middle Eastern communities. They were also involved in polit...
Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History provides a wide-ranging examination of war in human history, from the beginning of the species until the current rise of the so-called Islamic State. Although it covers many societies throughout time, the book does not attempt to tell all stories from all places, nor does it try to narrate "important" conflicts. Instead, author Wayne E. Lee describes the emergence of military innovations and systems, examining how they were created and then how they moved or affected other societies. These innovations are central to most historical narratives, including the development of social complexity, the rise of the state, the role of the steppe horseman, the spread of gunpowder, the rise of the west, the bureaucratization of military institutions, the industrial revolution and the rise of firepower, strategic bombing and nuclear weapons, and the creation of "people's war."
Mediterranean studies flourish in literary and cultural studies, but concepts of the Mediterranean and the theories and methods they use are very disparate. This is because the Mediterranean is not a simple geographical or historical unity, but a multiplicity, a network of highly interconnected elements, each of which is different and individual. Talking about Mediterranean literature raises the question of whether the connectivity of Mediterranean literature can or should be limited in some way by constructing an inside and an outside of the Mediterranean. What kind of connectivity and fragmentation do literary texts produce, how do they build and interrupt references (to the real, to fictional forms of representation, to history, but also to other texts and discourses), how do they create and deny communication, and how do they engage with and reflect literary and non-literary concepts of the Mediterranean? These and other questions are considered and discussed in the over twenty contributions gathered in this volume.
The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire is the first comprehensive overview of the empire’s relationship to its various European tributaries, Moldavia, Wallachia, Transylvania, Ragusa, the Crimean Khanate and the Cossack Hetmanate. The volume focuses on three fundamental aspects of the empire’s relationship with these polities: the various legal frameworks which determined their positions within the imperial system, the diplomatic contacts through which they sought to influence the imperial center, and the military cooperation between them and the Porte. Bringing together studies by eminent experts and presenting results of several less-known historiographical traditions, this volume contributes significantly to a deeper understanding of Ottoman power at the peripheries of the empire.
Explores the Safavid and Ottoman empires through the lens of gifts. When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi'ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. Sinem Arcak Casale here sets out to explore these two major Muslim empires through a surprising lens: gifts. Countless treasures—such as intricate carpets, gilded silver cups, and ivory-tusk knives—flowed from the Safavid to the Ottoman Empire throughout the...
This book discusses the role of Arabs in the Ottoman Empire for the four centuries that they were its subjects. The conventional wisdom was that the Arabs were a subject people who resented or, at best, were indifferent to their Ottoman overlords. This book argues that two social classes - Sunni religious scholars and urban notables - were willing collaborators in the imperial enterprise, and without whose support the Ottoman Empire would not have ruled the Arab lands for as long as they did.
In Brokering Empire, E. Natalie Rothman explores the intersecting worlds of those who regularly traversed the early modern Venetian-Ottoman frontier, including colonial migrants, redeemed slaves, merchants, commercial brokers, religious converts, and diplomatic interpreters. In their sustained interactions across linguistic, religious, and political lines these trans-imperial subjects helped to shape shifting imperial and cultural boundaries, including the emerging distinction between Europe and the Levant.Rothman argues that the period from 1570 to 1670 witnessed a gradual transformation in how Ottoman difference was conceived within Venetian institutions. Thanks in part to the activities o...