You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Paul Wittek’s The Rise of the Ottoman Empire was first published by the Royal Asiatic Society in 1938 and has been out of print for more than a quarter of a century. The present reissue of the text also brings together translations of some of his other studies on Ottoman history; eight closely interconnected writings on the period from the founding of the state to the Fall of Constantinople and the reign of Mehmed II. Most of these pieces reproduces the texts of lectures or conference papers delivered by Wittek between 1936 and 1938 when he was teaching at Université Libré in Brussels, Belgium. The books or journals in which they were originally published are for the most part inaccessib...
The Civil War of 1402-1413 is one of the most complicated periods in Ottoman history. This book is the first full-length study of that chapter in history, which began with Timur's dismemberment of the early Ottoman Empire following his defeat of Bayezid 'the Thunderbolt' at Ankara (1402). This book is a detailed reconstruction of events based on available sources, as well as a study of the period's political culture as reflected in its historical narratives.
The civil war of 1402-1413 is one of the most complicated and fascinating periods in Ottoman history. It is often called the interregnum because of its political instability, but that term does not do justice to the fact that the civil war was a chapter of Ottoman history in its own right. This book is the first full-length study of that chapter, which began with Timur’s dismemberment of the early Ottoman Empire following his defeat of Bayezid “the Thunderbolt” at Ankara (1402). After Timur’s departure, what was left of the Ottoman realm was contested by Bayezid’s sons in a series of bloody wars involving many internal factions and foreign powers. As part of those wars some of the earliest Ottoman historical literature was produced in the courts of the warring princes, especially Mehmed Çelebi, who was the final winner and needed to justify killing his brothers. This book is a detailed reconstruction of events based on the available sources, as well as a study of the period’s political culture as reflected in its historical narratives.
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.
In this volume, we try to understand the "Mamluk Empire" not as a confined space but as a region where several nodes of different networks existed side-by-side and at the same time. In our opinion, these networks constitute to a great extent the core of the so-called Mamluk society; they form the basis of the social order. Following, in part, concepts refined in the New Area Studies, recent reflections about the phenomenon of the "Empire - State", trajectories in today's Global History, and the spatial turn in modern historiography, we intend to identify a number of physical and cognitive networks with one or more nodes in Mamluk-controlled territories. In addition to this, one of the most important analytical questions would be to define the role of these networks in Mamluk society.
Contemporary debates about Muslim slavery occur in a context of fierce polemics between Islam and other belief systems. While Islamic groups had an ambivalent and generally muted impact on the legal repudiation of slavery, a growing religious commitment to abolition was essential if legislation was to be enforced in the twentieth century. Drawing on examples from the whole 'abode' of Islam, from the Philipines to Senegal and from the Caucasus to South Africa, Gervase Clarence-Smith ranges across the history of Islam, paying particular attention to the period from the late 18th century to the present.
This Festschrift brings together a range of scholars who congratulate Reinhard Schulze on the occasion of his 65th birthday, by shedding light and reflecting on the relation between Islam and modernity. Scholars from the fields of Islamic studies, religious studies, sociology and Arabic literature connect in various ways to Reinhard Schulze’s work to constructively criticize a Eurocentric understanding of modernity. The more specific aspects dealt with under the overarching topic of Islam and modernity make for the four thematic sections of this volume: the study of religion, Islam, and Islamic studies; Islamic knowledge cultures and normativity; language and literature as media of moderni...
The sixth volume of The New Cambridge Medieval History covers the fourteenth century, a period dominated by plague, other natural disasters and war which brought to an end three centuries of economic growth and cultural expansion in Christian Europe, but one which also saw important developments in government, religious and intellectual life, and new cultural and artistic patterns. Part I sets the scene by discussion of general themes in the theory and practice of government, religion, social and economic history, and culture. Part II deals with the individual histories of the states of western Europe; Part III with that of the Church at the time of the Avignon papacy and the Great Schism; and Part IV with eastern and northern Europe, Byzantium and the early Ottomans, giving particular attention to the social and economic relations with westerners and those of other civilisations in the Mediterranean.
The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire explores the serious and far-reaching impacts of Little Ice Age climate fluctuations in Ottoman lands. This study demonstrates how imperial systems of provisioning and settlement that defined Ottoman power in the 1500s came unraveled in the face of ecological pressures and extreme cold and drought, leading to the outbreak of the destructive Celali Rebellion (1595–1610). This rebellion marked a turning point in Ottoman fortunes, as a combination of ongoing Little Ice Age climate events, nomad incursions and rural disorder postponed Ottoman recovery over the following century, with enduring impacts on the region's population, land use and economy.
This unique, comparative description of the Hungarian, Habsburg, and Ottoman military frontiers in the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries provides fascinating reading to those interested in military history. It concentrates on the administration, finance, manpower problems, and aspects of the military revolution in the marches.