book’s narrative arc, which develops chronologically over twenty-two chapters, generally follows the history of the Ottoman dynasty, which ruled the empire from the end of the thirteenth century until the Young Turk revolution in 1908. Baer defies the essentialization that plagues earlier generations of Ottomanist scholarship by instead emphasizing the fluidity and contingency of categories such as confession, ethnicity, and gender. The book accordingly employs gender and religion to bring – as much as is possible in a single monograph – a multi-confessional, multilingual, and geographically diverse empire into a single frame. Neither were fixed categories and in fact – as evidenced by the ways in which they changed over time – central facets in how the empire was organized and legitimized. The fluid and hierarchical aspects of Ottoman imperialism therefore come to the fore in the book’s first chapters. The gazis and sultans are there and they are in charge; their rule however is not a given, something they established in large part because they had forged relations with Christians and used converts and slaves to build out the dynasty’s household and fashion an imperial administration. 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 . The Ottoman Empire was surprisingly tolerant and modern, according to this sweeping chronicle. Historian Baer ( Honored by the Glory of Islam) recaps the Empire’s rise—at its 17th-century peak it ruled most of the Middle East and southeastern Europe—and long decline within a larger European context, emphasizing its entwinement with European geopolitics and culture and its seething intellectual and religious currents, which paralleled the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment. He also highlights its innovative multiculturalism and social engineering. The Ottomans’ Muslim-dominated society incorporated Christians, Jews, and ethnic minorities respectfully, Baer notes, until a 20th-century turn to Turkish ethno-nationalism precipitated the Armenian genocide, and its early system of converting Christian slave children to Islam and training them for the military and governmental posts produced a meritocratic army and administration. Baer’s elegantly written narrative is full of bloody state building—a new sultan was expected to murder his brothers to keep them from challenging him for the throne—along with intriguing, counterintuitive takes on Ottoman culture. He claims, for instance, that the sultan’s fabled harem was an epicenter of female political empowerment, and that sexual relations between men and boys were de rigueur among elites. This immersive study makes the Ottomans seem less exotic but more fascinating. (Oct.) Publishers Weekly A more painful legacy, because of its actuality, is the misreading by the Turks of their history. They are not taught to appreciate the cosmopolitan aspect of their ancestors’ empire, when high positions were open to talented Jews and Armenians. Many Turks, especially members of the nationalist MHP party, like to recall the Empire as it never was, a homogenous Turkish and Sunni-Muslim state. Baer’s book, with its emphasis on the role of minorities and deviant Sufi groups, will not be to their liking. Baer traces the origins of the Ottoman dynasty from its humble beginnings as a nomadic tribe in Anatolia to its rise as a super power, a global empire that spanned three continents and six centuries. He highlights the Ottoman heritage of Byzantine-Roman, Turco-Mongol, and Muslim influences, and how they shaped the Ottoman identity and worldview. He also explores the Ottoman practices of religious conversion, patronage, diplomacy, warfare, reform, succession politics which culminated into fratricide and how they changed over time in response to internal and external challenges and eventually the empire collapsed and how

The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs; Collected Works

Marc David Baer’s core argument in this highly readable book is that more than 600 years of the Ottoman empire should be seen as an inseparable part of the history of Europe, and not as something detached from it, as with false narratives that paint the east and west, and Christianity and Islam, as antithetical. Baer offers a fuller, fresher view of the dynasty that ruled an empire for 500 years and helped shape the West as much as the Habsburgs or Romanovs… A major achievement. [Baer] is a writer in full command of his subject.”— The Spectator Magnificent… [An] important and hugely readable book — a model of well-written, accessible scholarship."— Financial Times A winning portrait of seven centuries of empire, teeming with life and colour, human interest and oddity, cruelty and oppression mixed with pleasure, benevolence and great artistic beauty.”— Sunday Times It’s not news that Sufism is interesting, but I couldn’t help observing while reading this history that, though on one level I already felt like I was being punished, like I was punishing myself for wanting more after a previous history, I’d still be really interested in a history of Sufism. I’m sure there’s an encyclopedia somewhere, actually, there must be people with graduate degrees in the history of Sufism. Over and over, throughout the 600-year history of the empire, political events are mixed up with the latest emergence of a new doctrine or particularly charismatic new Sufi leader.By 1401, a century later, Murad I became the first Sultan and established the "Collection", where Christian boys were kidnapped, circumcised, and converted into Islamic salve-soldiers known as "Janissaries". Marc David Baer’s colorful, readable book is informed by all the newest research on his massive subject. In showing how an epic of universal empire, conquest and toleration turned into the drama of nationalism, crisis, and genocide, he gives us not only an expansive history of the Ottomans, but an expanded history of Europe.”— James McDougall, University of Oxford The Renaissance was not about creating a few beautiful works of art. When Cosmo de Medici commissioned Donatello to create the first free standing male nude sculpture since ancient times what was important was that he put in the courtyard of the Medici Palazzo were it could be seen by everyone coming to see him. Because of it Florence would welcome Michelangelo's gigantic nude David as an image of the city and its freedoms into its most important public space. The importance of the Renaissance was the way it ideas moved out from a few scholars and noblemen to everyone and gradually embarked on opening up and changing the way people, all people thought. This major new history of the Ottoman dynasty reveals a diverse empire that straddled East and West. The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans’ multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe’s heart. Indeed, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans’ remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire, historian Marc David Baer traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic, and Byzantine heritage. The Ottomans pioneered religious toleration even as they used religious conversion to integrate conquered peoples. But in the nineteenth century, they embraced exclusivity, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the empire’s demise after the First World War. The Ottomans vividly reveals the dynasty’s full history and its enduring impact on Europe and the world. The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs by Marc David Baer – eBook Details A hugely impressive sweeping narrative. Covering seven centuries, this book adds a new perspective to global history by emphasising the role of this longstanding and important dynasty.

The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs - AbeBooks The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs - AbeBooks

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. That the Ottoman Empire wasn't actually majority-Muslim until Selim I "The Grim" conquered the Mamelukes and expanded into Safavid-held territories in the late 1400's. 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 author correctly recognizes how the Ottoman Empire is generally only tangentially studied and appreciated: it is known for finally capturing Constantinople and eliminating the Byzantine Empire; it was romanticized as the land of sultans and his harem; it represented a continual threat to central Europe; they were part of the Central Powers. Yet the Ottomans are seen as wholly Other, Eastern; not part of the European world. Both Europeans and Turks have taken away divergent lessons from the collapse of the empire, and both are misleading. As Baer points out, the Ottoman role in European history is understated, and when remembered, viewed as negative. We think of the massacres of Missolonghi, depicted by Delacroix, rather than the Drina Bridge of Sokolović Paşa. The negative view of the Ottomans reflects not just a bias against the Turks, I argue, but ignorance about Eastern Europe in general. This region, deeply linked to Asia through the Byzantines, the Mongols as well as the Ottomans, is poorly understood by European readers who think of Europe stopping at the River Elbe. [1] As did Germany’s Chancellor Adenhauer, who famously sighed, when crossing that river on his way to Berlin, “Ach, Asien”.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. The traditions of the rival Holy Roman Empire were completely different. Since the Roman Emperors embraced Christianity, religion and citizenship had been identical. With few exceptions (the Jews, the Moors of Spain, Sicily) Medieval Christendom had no tradition of ruling over non-Christians. Religious tolerance was simply unnecessary for the Ottomans’ rival for European domination, Emperor Charles V. The West only discovered the virtues of that policy in the political exhaustion following the murderous wars of religion. We can agree that the Ottomans’ practiced tolerance, but see it as no more than realpolitik. Archaeological Treasures of Uzbekistan: From Alexander the Great to the Kushan Empire” at James Simon Gallery, Berlin

The Ottomans by Marc David Baer review – when east met west

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. When he left Spain, Christopher Columbus was first trying to avoid the Mamluk-controlled eastern Mediterranean; this is why he brought a translator with him who spoke Arabic. Wonder where the money came for his voyages? Confiscated Jewish and Muslim wealth. Columbus couldn’t leave from Cadiz because it was filled with fleeing Jews and so he left from Palos. Don Quixote in written in exactly that time of Muslim exodus, although Cide Benegeli’s writings were the true origin of Don Quixote. Ottomans thought that the “Abkhaz were masturbating simpletons.” Istanbul during Suleiman I had 350,000 people and one third of them were Christian. Ottomans welcomed Jews and Muslims fleeing from Spain. England banished their Jews in 1290. Ottoman harems were actually like a convent; they were the private part of any household large enough to have its own private quarters. Baer’s enthusiasm for the empire as a cosmopolitan, European-oriented and tolerant state will surprise some readers. He is right to argue that the Ottomans were more tolerant than the Europeans, who expelled the Muslims from Spain and instituted the Inquisition to persecute the forcibly converted Jews. I would argue this is not a unique feature of Ottoman genius, but a tradition of Muslim statecraft. The Caliphs of Islam, after their first conquests of Syria and Egypt in the 7th century, ruled non-Muslims majorities. Only in the 13th century, did Christians become a minority religion in the Middle East. As the Ottomans expanded into Europe (and the Mughals into India) tolerance, not conversion, was the only option available to them.

The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans’ multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe’s heart. Indeed, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans’ remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire, historian Marc David Baer traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic, and Byzantine heritage. The Ottomans pioneered religious toleration even as they used religious conversion to integrate conquered peoples. But in the nineteenth century, they embraced exclusivity, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the empire’s demise after the First World War. Quite different, yes, although not necessarily more accurate (how people - or peoples - view themselves being interesting but not at all the final word, after all), but in a book as consistently fascinating as The Ottomans, all perspectives end up being food for thought. 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 IStranbul 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. Marc David Baer’s The Ottomans is a scintillating and brilliantly panoramic account of the history of the Ottoman empire, from its genesis to its dissolution. Baer provides a clear and engaging account of the dynastic and high politics of the empire, whilst also surveying the Ottoman world’s social, cultural, intellectual and economic development. What emerges is an Ottoman Empire that was a direct product of and an active participant in both European and global history. It challenges and transforms how we think of ‘East’ and ‘West,’‘Enlightenment,’ and ‘modernity,’ and directly confronts the horrors as well as the achievements of Ottoman rule.” I have no problem with Professor Baer's arguments about the way he argues for the way the Ottoman empire differed in many attractive ways from the way things were done in Europe, particularly with regard to religious toleration. But Baer is not the first academic or popular historian to pass on this information. Philip Mansel in his 'Constantinople:City of the World's Desire' published over thirty years ago is rich in praise for many aspects of the Ottoman empire. Mansell's is a popular history so aimed at a broad audience and there are countless others including more academic works who have covered this ground.