Visions of the Ottoman World in Renaissance Europe


Book Description

Andrei Pippidi follows ideas of the Ottoman Empire in Eastern Europe from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries and ties the roots of these images to patterns in Western intellectualism. A pathbreaking book, his volume reconsiders the writing of Erasmus, Luther, and Machiavelli -- individuals we consider intellectuals, yet who largely did not travel or have direct contact with the Ottoman Empire. Nor were these figures well-disposed to the Ottomans' predecessor, the Byzantine Empire, whose fall presented them with an intellectual conundrum: what could explain the impressive advance of the Ottomans across the Balkans and the inability of Christian Europe to hold the line against them? Christians also felt compelled to incorporate this significant new threat into their vision of the world, to rationalize and unravel its origins. These issues and events spawned a common market of ideas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as Europeans debated and represented the new Ottoman age. Pippidi's analysis frequently echoes trends in today's debates concerning the ongoing relationship between Turkey and greater Europe, and the struggle of Western societies to assimilate descendants of the empire.




From the "terror of the World" to the "sick Man of Europe"


Book Description

From the «Terror of the World» to the «Sick Man of Europe» sheds new light on the hotly debated issue of Orientalism by looking at the European images of the Ottoman Empire and society over three centuries. Through a careful examination of the European intellectual discourse, this book claims that there was no coherent and constant Europewide vision of the Turks until the eighteenth century and clearly demonstrates that the Age of Reason has not rendered reasonable images of the Turks. Indeed, once inspiring awe, the European opinion of Ottomans was held in contempt during this period.




Mapping the Ottomans


Book Description

This book examines how Ottomans were mapped in the narrative and visual imagination of early modern Europe's Christian kingdoms.




The Renaissance and the Ottoman World


Book Description

This volume brings together some of the latest research on the cultural, intellectual, and commercial interactions during the Renaissance between Western Europe and the Middle East, with particular reference to the Ottoman Empire. Recent scholarship has brought to the fore the economic, political, cultural, and personal interactions between Western European Christian states and the Eastern Mediterranean Islamic states, and has therefore highlighted the incongruity of conceiving of an iron curtain bisecting the mentalities of the various socio-political and religious communities located in the same Euro-Mediterranean space. Instead, the emphasis here is on interpreting the Mediterranean as a world traversed by trade routes and associated cultural and intellectual networks through which ideas, people and goods regularly travelled. The fourteen articles in this volume contribute to an exciting cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary scholarly dialogue that explores elements of continuity and exchange between the two areas and positions the Ottoman Empire as an integral element of the geo-political and cultural continuum within which the Renaissance evolved. The aim of this volume is to refine current understandings of the diverse artistic, intellectual and political interactions in the early modern Mediterranean world and, in doing so, to contribute further to the discussion of the scope and nature of the Renaissance. The articles, from major scholars of the field, include discussions of commercial contacts; the exchange of technological, cartographical, philosophical, and scientific knowledge; the role of Venice in transmitting the culture of the Islamic East Mediterranean to Western Europe; the use of Middle Eastern objects in the Western European Renaissance; shared sources of inspiration in Italian and Ottoman architecture; musical exchanges; and the use of East Mediterranean sources in Western scholarship and European sources in Ottoman scholarship.




Printing a Mediterranean World


Book Description

In 1482 Francesco Berlinghieri produced the Geographia, a book of over 100 folio leaves describing the world in Italian verse interleaved with lavishly engraved maps. Roberts demonstrates that the Geographia represents the moment of transition between printing and manuscript culture, while forming a critical base for the rise of modern cartography.




The Ottoman Age of Exploration


Book Description

In 1517, the Ottoman Sultan Selim "the Grim" conquered Egypt and brought his empire for the first time in history into direct contact with the trading world of the Indian Ocean. During the decades that followed, the Ottomans became progressively more engaged in the affairs of this vast and previously unfamiliar region, eventually to the point of launching a systematic ideological, military and commercial challenge to the Portuguese Empire, their main rival for control of the lucrative trade routes of maritime Asia. The Ottoman Age of Exploration is the first comprehensive historical account of this century-long struggle for global dominance, a struggle that raged from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Straits of Malacca, and from the interior of Africa to the steppes of Central Asia. Based on extensive research in the archives of Turkey and Portugal, as well as materials written on three continents and in a half dozen languages, it presents an unprecedented picture of the global reach of the Ottoman state during the sixteenth century. It does so through a dramatic recounting of the lives of sultans and viziers, spies, corsairs, soldiers-of-fortune, and women from the imperial harem. Challenging traditional narratives of Western dominance, it argues that the Ottomans were not only active participants in the Age of Exploration, but ultimately bested the Portuguese in the game of global politics by using sea power, dynastic prestige, and commercial savoir faire to create their own imperial dominion throughout the Indian Ocean.




Constantinopolis/Istanbul


Book Description

"Studies the reconstruction of Byzantine Constantinople as the capital city of the Ottoman empire following its capture in 1453, delineating the complex interplay of socio-political, architectural, visual, and literary processes that underlay the city's transformation"--Provided by publisher.




Constantinople


Book Description




Empire and Power in the Reign of Süleyman


Book Description

Kaya Şahin's book offers a revisionist reading of Ottoman history during the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent (1520–66). By examining the life and works of a bureaucrat, Celalzade Mustafa, Şahin argues that the empire was built as part of the Eurasian momentum of empire building and demonstrates the imperial vision of sixteenth-century Ottomans. This unique study shows that, in contrast with many Eurocentric views, the Ottomans were active players in European politics, with an imperial culture in direct competition with that of the Habsburgs and the Safavids. Indeed, this book explains Ottoman empire building with reference to the larger Eurasian context, from Tudor England to Mughal India, contextualizing such issues as state formation, imperial policy and empire building in the period more generally. Şahin's work also devotes significant attention to the often-ignored religious dimension of the Ottoman-Safavid struggle, showing how the rivalry redefined Sunni and Shiite Islam, laying the foundations for today's religious tensions.




Visions of the City


Book Description

Visions of the City is a dramatic history of utopian urbanism in the twentieth century. It explores radical demands for new spaces and ways of living, and considers their effects on planning, architecture and struggles to shape urban landscapes. The author critically examines influential utopian approaches to urbanism in western Europe associated with such figures as Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier, uncovering the political interests, desires and anxieties that lay behind their ideal cities. He also investigates avant-garde perspectives from the time that challenged these conceptions of cities, especially from within surrealism. At the heart of this richly illustrated book is an encounter with the explosive ideas of the situationists. Tracing the subversive practices of this avant-garde group and its associates from their explorations of Paris during the 1950s to their alternative visions based on nomadic life and play, David Pinder convincingly explains the significance of their revolutionary attempts to transform urban spaces and everyday life. He addresses in particular Constant's New Babylon, finding within his proposals a still powerful provocation to imagine cities otherwise. The book not only recovers vital moments from past hopes and dreams of modern urbanism. It also contests current claims about the 'end of utopia', arguing that reconsidering earlier projects can play a critical role in developing utopian perspectives today. Through the study of utopian visions, it aims to rekindle elements of utopianism itself. A superb critical exploration of the underside of utopian thought over the last hundred years and its continuing relevance in the here and now for thinking about possible urban worlds. The treatment of the Situationists and their milieu is a revelation. David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, City University of New York Graduate School