The Second Ottoman Empire


Book Description

This book is a post-revisionist history of the late Ottoman Empire that makes a major contribution to Ottoman scholarship.




Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire


Book Description

The aim of these studies is to explore the scientific activity and learning that took place within the Ottoman empire, a subject often neglected by both historians of science and of the Ottoman world. Professor Ihsanoglu has been a pioneer in this field. In several papers he analyses the continuing tradition of Arabic science inherited by the Ottomans, together with the contributions made by the conquered Christian and incoming Jewish populations. The main focus, however, is upon the Ottoman reaction to, accommodation with, and eventual acceptance of the Western scientific tradition. Setting this in the context of contemporary cultural and political life, the author examines existing institutions of learning and the spread of ’Western-style’ scientific and learned societies and institutions, and charts the adoption of the ideas and methods of Western science and technology. Two case studies look in particular at astronomy and at the introduction of aviation.







Empire and Education under the Ottomans


Book Description

Once hailed as 'the eternal state', the Ottoman Empire was in decline by the end of the nineteenth century, finally collapsing under the pressures of World War I. Yet its legacies are still apparent, and few have had more impact than those of its schools and educational policies. "Empire and Education under the Ottomans" analyses the Empire's educational politics from the mid-nineteenth century, amidst the Tanzimat reform period, until "The Young Turk Revolution in 1908". Through a focus on the regional impact of decrees from Istanbul, Emine O. Evered unravels the complexities of the era, demonstrating how educational changes devised to strengthen the Empire actually hastened its demise. This book is the first history of education in the Ottoman Middle East to evaluate policies in the context of local responses and resistance, and includes the first published English translation of the watershed 1869 Ottoman Education Law. A stimulating and impressively-researched study, it represents an important new addition to the historiography of the Ottoman Empire and will be essential for those researching its lasting legacy.




French Mediterraneans


Book Description

While the Mediterranean is often considered a distinct, unified space, recent scholarship on the early modern history of the sea has suggested that this perspective is essentially a Western one, devised from the vantage point of imperial power that historically patrolled the region’s seas and controlled its ports. By contrast, for the peoples of its southern shores, the Mediterranean was polymorphous, shifting with the economic and seafaring exigencies of the moment. Nonetheless, by the nineteenth century the idea of a monolithic Mediterranean had either been absorbed by or imposed on the populations of the region. In French Mediterraneans editors Patricia M. E. Lorcin and Todd Shepard offer a collection of scholarship that reveals the important French element in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century creation of the singular Mediterranean. These essays provide a critical study of space and movement through new approaches to think about the maps, migrations, and margins of the sea in the French imperial and transnational context. By reconceptualizing the Mediterranean, this volume illuminates the diversity of connections between places and polities that rarely fit models of nation-state allegiances or preordained geographies.




Ottoman Empire and European Theatre Vol. I


Book Description

The first volume of the book series Ottoman Empire and European Theatre focuses on the period between 1756 and 1808, the era of W. A. Mozart (1756-1791) and Sultan Selim III (1761-1808). These historical personalities, whose life-spans overlap, were towering figures of their time: Mozart as an extraordinary composer and Selim III as both a politician and a composer. Inspired by the structure of opera, the forty-four contributions of Volume I are arranged in eight sections, entitled Ouverture, Prologue, Acts I-V and Epilogue. The Ouverture includes the opening speeches of diplomats, politicians, and scholars as well as a memorial text for the "Genius of Opera", Turkish prima donna Leyla Gencer (1928-2008). The Prologue, "The Stage of Politics", features texts by distinguished historians who give an historical overview of the Ottoman Empire and Europe in the late eighteenth century, from both Turkish and Austrian points of view. Act I features texts concerning "Diplomacy and Theatre", and Act II takes the reader to "Europe South, West and North". Act III has contributions concerning theatre in "Central Europe", while Act IV deals with "Mozart" and the world of the seraglio. Act V turns our attention to the Ottoman "Sultan Selim III", and the Epilogue considers literary and theatrical adventures of "The Hero in the Sultan's Harem". Contributions by Metin And, Emre Araci, Tülay Artan, Esin Akalin, Thomas Betzwieser, Annemarie Bönsch, Emil Brix, Christian Brunmayr, Bertrand Michael Buchmann, Aysin Candan, Helga Dostal, Erich Duda, Wolfgang Greisenegger, Heidemaria Gürer, Matthew Head, Caroline Herfert, Bent Holm, Frank Huss, Michael Hüttler, Nadja Kayali, Hans-Peter Kellner, Alexandre Lhâa, Isabelle Moindrot, Ilber Ortayli, Zeynep Oral, Cemal Öztas, William F. Parmentier, Matthias J. Pernerstorfer, Gabriele C. Pfeiffer, Walter Puchner, Günsel Renda, Mustafa Fatih Salgar, Ulrike Schneider, Selin Ipek, Käthe Springer-Dissmann, Suna Suner, Marianne Travén, B. Babür Turna, Derek Weber, Mehmet Alaaddin Yalçinkaya, Selim Yenel.




Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750


Book Description

Articles collected in Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750 engage with the idea that “Sunnism” itself has a history and trace how particular Islamic genres—ranging from prayer manuals, heresiographies, creeds, hadith and fatwa collections, legal and theological treatises, and historiography to mosques and Sufi convents—developed and were reinterpreted in the Ottoman Empire between c. 1450 and c. 1750. The volume epitomizes the growing scholarly interest in historicizing Islamic discourses and practices of the post-classical era, which has heretofore been styled as a period of decline, reflecting critically on the concepts of ‘tradition’, ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘orthopraxy’ as they were conceived and debated in the context of building and maintaining the longest-lasting Muslim-ruled empire. Contributors: Helen Pfeifer; Nabil al-Tikriti; Derin Terzioğlu; Tijana Krstić; Nir Shafir; Guy Burak; Çiğdem Kafesçioğlu; Grigor Boykov; H. Evren Sünnetçioğlu; Ünver Rüstem; Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer; Vefa Erginbaş; Selim Güngörürler.




The House of Sciences


Book Description

Following a string of military defeats at the end of the eighteenth century, Ottoman leaders realized that their classical traditions and institutions could not compete with Russia and the European states' technological and economic superiority.One of a series of nineteenth-century reform initiatives was the creation of a European-style university called darülfünun. From the Arabic words dar, meaning "house," and fünun, meaning "sciences," the darülfünun would incorporate the western sciences into deeply entrenched academic traditions and institutions in an effort to bridge the gap with Europe. The completely new institution, distinct from the existing pre-modern medreses, was modeled after the French educational system and created an infrastructure for national universities in Turkey and some of the Arab-speaking provinces. It also influenced the establishment of universities in Iran and Afghanistan. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu's study sheds new light on an important and pioneering experiment in East-West relations, tracking the multifaceted transformation at work in Istanbul during the transition from classical to modern modes of scientific education. Out of this intellectual ferment, a new Ottoman Turkish scientific language developed, the terminology of which served as a convenient vehicle for expressing and teaching modern science throughout the Empire.




Science among the Ottomans


Book Description

Scholars have long thought that, following the Muslim Golden Age of the medieval era, the Ottoman Empire grew culturally and technologically isolated, losing interest in innovation and placing the empire on a path toward stagnation and decline. Science among the Ottomans challenges this widely accepted Western image of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ottomans as backward and impoverished. In the first book on this topic in English in over sixty years, Miri Shefer-Mossensohn contends that Ottoman society and culture created a fertile environment that fostered diverse scientific activity. She demonstrates that the Ottomans excelled in adapting the inventions of others to their own needs and improving them. For example, in 1877, the Ottoman Empire boasted the seventh-longest electric telegraph system in the world; indeed, the Ottomans were among the era’s most advanced nations with regard to modern communication infrastructure. To substantiate her claims about science in the empire, Shefer-Mossensohn studies patterns of learning; state involvement in technological activities; and Turkish- and Arabic-speaking Ottomans who produced, consumed, and altered scientific practices. The results reveal Ottoman participation in science to have been a dynamic force that helped sustain the six-hundred-year empire.




Ottoman Cyprus


Book Description

The collective volume Ottoman Cyprus - New Perspectives presents new studies on various topics (primarily history, but also history of art, folklore and literature) about Cyprus in the Ottoman period (1571-1878), offering new approaches on the history of institutions and developments in Cyprus during the Ottoman period, in an attempt to propose new interpretative frameworks and a more analytical reading of the historical past. The book is divided into four parts: The first part concerns the history of the island from the eve of the Ottoman conquest until the cession of the island to British administration. The studies of this part follow a chronological order, and analyze developments in Cyprus as an Ottoman province and part of the Empire's periphery. In the second part there are studies that analyze various particular historical topics, without necessarily following a chronological order. In the third part there are studies on literature, folklore and art. The fourth part includes an extensive bibliographical guide, a catalogue of archives and archival material related to Cyprus in the Ottoman period, as well as chronological lists of important officials.