Richard Antaramian, «Marc David Baer, The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs», Études arméniennes contemporaines, 14|2022, 221-225. Référence électronique The Ottoman Empire was founded by, and named after, Osman I, a tribal leader of one of many Anatolian beyliks which emerged in the second half of the thirteenth century. His grandson Murad I, who ruled 1362 to 1389, was the first head of the Ottoman dynasty to style himself as sultan, secular civil and military leader, rather than the title of 'bey' (chief) taken by his predecessors Osman and Orhan. The new title represented the transition to a more settled and organised empire, which was expanded by Murad I's conquests of Adrianople (which he renamed Edirne) and much of the Balkans during his reign.

The Ottomans - review - Popular history books The Ottomans - review - Popular history books

The lives of the various leaders are told as well as their successes and failures; much is said about the nature of the harem and the institutional bureaucracy. Much is made of the sexuality of the age and how it privileged the love of young boys over that of women, but also how that view was attempted to be fully reformed in the 19th century. The author tries to suggest that the Ottomans were about discovery also, but the evidence for such a view is spotty. He is on much firmer ground regarding how Ottoman influence was profoundly felt throughout Europe, and how European influence profoundly influenced the Ottoman Empire. generative as the book’s aim and its pursuit of it are in this area, they are something of a mixed bag elsewhere. Efforts to connect the Ottoman experience to European history are sometimes useful and have the potential to do the kind of work the author seems to intend. Drawing parallels between the Ottoman slave trade in Crimea and that of the British in the Atlantic (p. 127), for example, does make powerful commentary on European state-building in the early modern period. More often, however, examples do little to advance the book’s narrative, its arguments, or the goal of reframing European history. Pointing out that the devşirme system (the youth levy used to conscript janissaries) would qualify as an act of genocide (p. 47), for example, needlessly distracts from an otherwise interesting discussion on how an Ottoman politics of difference resolved administrative issues that had plagued Turkic states. Similar such references, for instance, to secularism and the Peace of Westphalia (p. 72), disrupt the book’s narrative and conceptual flow. Baer is insistent that any history of “Europe” needs to include the Ottomans, and he’s convinced me that he’s right about that. Their exclusion from most histories is an unjustified omission based on racism and religious bias. Shortlisted for the 2022 Wolfson History Prize, this is a deserving candidate. It represents an excellent example of history writing for the general reader. The author is an Ottoman history specialist, having written many books in the field. He manages to convey his expertise to a general reader in an accessible fashion; the book is easy to read. It also benefits from a unifying theme, that of presenting the Ottoman Empire in its European context.If you are wondering why I have devoted time to discussing Brunelleschi's dome in a review of a history of the Ottomans and their empire by an academic historian it is because on reading this paragraph (the only reference given to support the idea that Brunelleschi was influenced by Ottoman architecture to create the dome in Florence is a National Geographic article by a journalist whose latest book was about scandals in the Italian oil oil business, not exactly the reference you expect in a well researched and argued history book) I eventually threw this book across the room because I could not take the extravagant and totally unprofessional propagandising the author indulges in. That I did it only once is purely down to the fact it was not mine but a library book.

The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs | SOAS The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs | SOAS

The book is structured really well: Baer divides the historical periods loosely depending on the character of that period in Ottoman history and gives you an introduction to that, explaining the main themes of the period, before delving deeper into every monarch in that particular time. I loved Christophe de Bellaigue’s book on SUleyman the Magnificent, but I wanted more detail on how exactly he Empire was administered, given the diversity of ethnicities, and languages, and this book gave me that, and more. The Ottomans more or less followed the model of the Roman Empire, with provinces governed by Ottoman administrators, and the option of advancing your fortunes if you converted to Islam ( exactly the model followed by Constantine and his successors, that led to the spread of Christianity in Europe). The Ottoman Emperors made success and belonging as a citizen of the Empire contingent on Islam, which that meant that anyone, regardless of ethnicity, nationality, language, could rise through the ranks in the court, diplomacy, business or the military. Analogously, in Europe at the time, it would be much more rare to have several courtiers, or army leaders, or businessmen, whose language and ethnicity were completely different-there was an odd Eugene of Savoy , of course, in the Hapsburg Court, but this was a lot more commonplace in the Ottoman Empire.He also explains the quite unique Janissary guard, formed entirely of children taken from conquered provinces, trained in Istanbul to be the Emperor’s elite fighting force. Apart from the life of the Emperors, Baer shows you how daily life and trade were conducted, and evolved, and rebellions quelled-the story of Sabbatai Zvi was one of the most interesting historical episodes I’ve read. Despite all this, the journey is fascinating, it shows the way the Ottoman empire weaves into so much history and how they contributed hugely to where we are today, in terms of art, literature, language, music and much more. The book runs right up to modern day and clarifies how some of what contributes to the Middle East being where it is now. The greatest strength of this book is that it does more than just recount the history of the Ottoman Empire. It connects that history to questions of how the Ottomans viewed themselves, how others viewed them, and how those perceptions changed over time. This goes to the core of what the book is about.

Speakers

The Ottoman Empire controlled a large part of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It crushed the Byzantine Empire and after it won in the Balkans it became a genuine transcontinental empire. It has been perceived in history as being the Islamic foe of Christian Europe, but the reality was utterly different, it was a multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious society that accepted people from everywhere. It is somewhat anachronistic to glorify the empire as a multicultural haven; yes, many groups found greater tolerance under the Ottomans than they did under other regimes, but even as this story goes, it becomes clear that in times of crisis it reasserted itself as a fundamentally Muslim enterprise. Its undoing is well described by the nationalism that fueled the 19th and early 20th centuries: both the nationalism of the peoples who separated from the empire, and the Turkish nationalism that overtook the empire's leadership.

Marc David Baer, The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs

As did Germany’s Chancellor Adenhauer, who famously sighed, when crossing that river on his way to Berlin, “Ach, Asien”. For the author, his book is partly about 'the question is what to do with the memories' of Turkey's Ottoman past. That makes this book thought provoking and important not only for those interested in the history of the Ottomans, but also those interested in modern day Turkey, South-East Europe and the other lands once controlled by the heirs of Osman I. A good corrective to neglect of the Ottoman Empire, even if its arguments are often a bit overstated. After travelling regularly to Türkiye for work, I found myself more and more interested in this country and it’s history and so I began reading books on the Ottoman Empire of which this was the first.

Chair

embrace of cultural history supports Baer’s efforts to realize the book’s stated goal of reframing European history such that it can include the Ottomans. Here, he profits from the maturation of the field of Ottoman history over the last two decades, something in which his own impressive body of scholarship has played no small role. A number of factors, including the critique of Orientalism, the opening of the Ottoman archives, and the cultural turn in the discipline of history, ushered in new research agendas that grappled with questions of decline, gender, and the fate of the empire’s non-Muslims. Taken as a whole, this new body of scholarship moves the field away from positivist frameworks that privilege Eurocentric developmentalism and ethnonational narratives and instead towards ones better attuned to the dynamic aspects of imperial history. Baer ably synthesizes much of this new scholarship to develop his own framework, organized primarily around the intersection of gender and religion, to offer critical new perspectives on the ruling elite and the types of coercion they employed to enforce their rule. This framework consequently makes it possible to bring debates, often had in isolation from one another, together. Professor Baer’s research focuses on the connected histories of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in European and Middle Eastern history, from the early modern era to the modern . That being said, this is still a wonderful history that enlightens us about many of the incorrect ideas of the Ottomans. In 1288, the Gazi (a mix of spiritual/military leader) Osman led Turkic steppes peoples into Anatolia and established a kingdom. His son Orhan greatly expanded it.