Ottoman Historical Documents: The Institutions of an Empire By V. L. Ménage, edited by Colin Imber

Abstract

V. L. Ménage, who died in 2015, was Lecturer and then Professor at the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies from 1955 until 1983, and one of the pioneers of Ottoman history in the United Kingdom. When he began teaching it, the subject, at least in the UK, was just beginning to emerge from being an afterthought in Oriental Studies departments that focused on the so-called golden age of Islamic civilization in the medieval period, while playing cameos in early modern European diplomatic and military history. Along with his SOAS colleague Bernard Lewis, V. L. Ménage played a key role in bringing Ottoman history to greater prominence in the UK. While Lewis focused on the modern period and developments in political ideas associated with the Tanzimat, Ménage focused on the period of the empire’s expansion and consolidation of its rule between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, teaching a long-standing course called ‘Ottoman Institutions.’ As few published primary sources were available at the time, at least in English, Ménage created his own set of translated sources for the course. This collection is published for the first time in this book, edited and augmented by Colin Imber, Reader in Turkish at the University of Manchester until his retirement. He has added introductions to the chapters and subsections explaining the historical context of each set of documents. The great majority of the translated sources are as Ménage wrote them, although in a few cases Imber has provided new translations where the original was missing, or replaced one of Ménage’s sources with a more suitable alternative.