Ottoman Origins Research Articles

Late Ottoman Origins of Modern Islamic Thought: Turkish and Egyptian Thinkers on the Disruption of Islamic Knowledge By Andrew Hammond

<i>Late Ottoman Origins of Modern Islamic Thought: Turkish and Egyptian Thinkers on the Disruption of Islamic Knowledge</i> By <scp>Andrew Hammond</scp>

When Doves Feed Hawks: Ottoman War Decision and European Powers Towards the Crimean War

When does the war party win in the decision-making process? Why does the peace party lose even if war is too risky? In this article, we show that certain balancing acts of the peace party might increase the confidence of the war party. We examine how the Ottoman Empire’s risky Crimean War decision and its war declaration against Russia on 4 October 1853 were shaped by internal debating through time, foreign penetration, and dynamic interplay between the Ottoman decision makers and a changing European strategic environment. The large literature on the Crimean War does not include a systematic analysis of the Ottoman origins of the Crimean War and the Ottoman war decision. We trace the Ottoman decision-making process in the fateful months of 1853 to establish the origins of the Crimean War. We empirically demonstrate the gradual formation of the Porte’s war decision by showing how the peace front stumbled upon war by inadvertently changing the decision structure in favor of the war party within a year.

Mosque, Landmark, Document

<h3>ABSTRACT:</h3> The history of Islam in Ghana has long been framed as a story rooted in the Sahel, whose iconic earth and timber mosques have been positioned as platforms from which Ghana’s own earth and timber mosques would spring. Such histories have merit; yet they, nonetheless, potentially circumvent the unique social contexts that shaped Ghana’s own local mosque forms, dismissing the relevance of other mosque spaces that rebuff the primacy of these original Sahelian architectural templates in favor of alternate design sources. Such narratives have continued even into the contemporary period. Thus, this essay takes the newly constructed Accra Furqan congregational mosque, located in the capital city of Accra, as a case study towards parsing out the complex, unique, and fundamentally intersectional reality of Ghanaian Islam as it has existed over time and space. The Accra Furqan is able to keep a finger on the pulse of Muslim realities within the context of the Ghanaian Islamicate by accommodating a spectrum of functions beyond just the spiritual. Further, built as it is in a style that derives symbolic capital from Ottoman origins, the mosque affirms Ghana’s participation within larger contemporary conversations not only through an engagement with global architectural legacies, but also Islamic practice and ideology throughout the global <i>ummah</i>. In doing so, the structure has enabled Ghanaian Muslims to further navigate the murky waters of their current socio-spiritual condition while also reaffirming their past and present agency as authors of their own social, cultural, and spiritual reality.

Ali Anooshahr, Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires: a Study of Politics and Invented Traditions

Reviewed by: Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires: a Study of Politics and Invented Traditions by Ali Anooshahr Jonathan Brack Ali Anooshahr. Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires: a Study of Politics and Invented Traditions. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 244 pp. Cloth, $78. ISBN: 978-0190693565. Ali Anooshahr's book offers an intriguing and valuable contribution to the growing field of comparative studies of the early modern Islamic Eurasian empires. The book explores how authors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries engaged with the ancestries and origin stories of the dynastic founders of their royal Turkic-Mongol patrons. Anooshahr highlights the various, creative modes authors in service of the court draw on in order to refashion and remodel, and in some cases, altogether invent or erase, their patrons' Turkic-Mongol pedigrees. Doing so, these individuals sought to establish their patrons' rule on a more formidable royal-genealogical legacy that could offer them some advantage in the competitive, and overly crowded, Eurasian arena of early-modern imperial claimants. As Anooshahr demonstrates, these cultural brokers went even further as they sought to downplay and disavow the ancestral past of their patrons, which was largely situated within the context of "Turkestan," that is, in their nomadic and Central Asian—often beheld as "barbarian" and pagan—origins. In its place, they fitted their patrons with new imagined lineages that would better suit and serve their sixteenth-century Islamic, Persianate, imperial, and mostly sedentary, present. The book aims to apply a literary approach to unravel the discourses of political power underlying these Persian-language chroniclers' strategies to mis/represent their patrons' dynastic histories, which the author refers to as "the teleology of Islamic monarchies" (p. 2). Due to the state of the sources, historians of the early stages of the early-modern Eurasian polities are often confronted by three choices: attempt to "demythologize" and "historicize" the re-renderings of the dynastic foundational myths, seek an alternative avenue [End Page 259] by rejecting these sources altogether in favor of more "objective" external accounts, or rather, read them for the way they seek to promote certain visions of the dynastic past in the context of their present. Anooshahr opts for this latter option exploring the often "intentional process of 'myth-making'" (p. 31). Following a short introduction presenting the premise of the book, chapter 2 takes the reader on a slight detour by examining the seventeenth to nineteenth-centuries European intellectual debate on the roots of these "Asian empires" and the often contradictory observations Europeans made about the early-modern Ottomans, Mughals, Safavids, Uzbeks, and Mongols. The next five chapters, however, focus on five interrelated case studies of Persian historical writing that each relates to one of these Eurasian polities. Chapter 3 examines the Persian historical writing of Idris Bitlisi, a refugee from Safavid Iran in the Ottoman court of Sultan Bayezid II, who was commissioned to compose "a book of history in the style of Persian works produced for the Ilkhans (Mongol rulers of Iran) to accurately chronicle the House of Osman and its achievements" due to the alleged unreliability of Turkish historical writing (p. 30). Focusing on Idris's sections on the origins of the Ottomans, Anooshahr argues that Idris actively sought to distance the ruling Ottoman house from their Turkestani-nomadic roots by "mythologizing Ottoman origin narratives." To this end, Idris appropriated and manipulated biblical and Quranic imageries and genealogies that allowed him to maintain the Ottoman connection to Central Asia, but also to relegate it to the distant past, offering the Ottomans in its place a new imperial pedigree heavily informed by the Ottoman pivotal expansion into the former Byzantine lands. Anooshahr situates Idris's efforts in an intermediate moment in Ottoman history, as the dynasty transitioned from their predatory-pastoralist, Turkestani-Central-Asian traditions to a new Rumli identity. Thus, he fashioned the Ottoman sultan as a new Caesar, an Alexander-like ruler, standing for agrarian prosperity, constrained military force and just sedentary-styled government. Chapter 4 studies the origins of the Safavid state. Here Anooshahr deviates from the proclaimed goal of the book and explores not only the "myth-making" process of the early Safavids, but also...

Hansaray Altın Çeşme From Bahçesaray, Crimea

Türk-İslam sanatına ait etkilerin kuzeyde ulaştığı son noktalardan biri olan Kırım’ın Bahçesaray kenti Osmanlı etkili yapılarla dikkati çekmektedir. Kırım Hanlığı’na başkentlik yapan bu kentte, hanlığın sarayı olan Hansaray bulunmaktadır. Mimari kuruluşu bakımından Topkapı Sarayı’nın küçük bir benzeri olan Hansaray, süslemeleriyle de Osmanlı etkilerini yoğun olarak yansıtmaktadır. Hansaray’ın inşasında İstanbul’dan getirilen mimar ve sanatçıların çalıştırılması, Osmanlı’nın merkezi İstanbul’daki motiflerin Kırım Hanlığı’nın merkezi Bahçesaray’a taşınmasına sebep olmuştur. Hansaray’ın II. Avlusundaki Taşlık, buda bulunan iki çeşmesiyle özel bir mekandır. Bu çeşmelerden biri olan Altın Çeşme, temel tasarımı, cephe düzeni ve süslemeleriyle Osmanlı çeşme mimarisinin Lâle Dönemi üslubu özelliklerini taşımaktadır. Bu çalışmada Hansaray Altın Çeşme’nin temel tasarımı, cephe düzeni ve süslemeleriyle tanıtılması, Osmanlı çeşme mimarisi içerisindeki yerinin saptanması amaçlanmıştır.

How to Found a New Dynasty: The Early Qajars’ Quest for Legitimacy

Abstract This paper focuses on how early Qajars established their rule and legitimacy. At first, Āqā Mohammad Khān, the first shah, imitated other rulers since Nāder Shāh, such as Mohammad-Hasan Khān Qājār, Āzād Khān Afghān, and Karim Khān Zand, in his coins and documents. Like his predecessors, he also tried to install a Safavid prince at Tehran as a puppet ruler. However, following his official coronation and his conquest of Iran, he changed the format of his royal edicts and issued extraordinarily heavy gold coins. Nevertheless, neither Āqā Mohammad Khān nor his successors created an official genealogy to legitimize their rule, instead modifying a genealogical tree of Ottoman origin to juxtapose their names alongside those of other royal families without connecting themselves directly to Biblical or Qurʾanic ancestors. The early Qajar case reveals new methods of establishing dynastic legitimacy which differed from the approach of earlier dynasties in the Persianate world.

CLOCK TOWERS FROM THE OTTOMAN PERIOD IN THE TERRITORY OF TODAY’S MONTENEGRO

Montenegrin clock towers represent the most important traces of cultural heritage of Ottoman period. Considering their functional features, appeal and position in space, these facilities are considered to be significant urban landmarks even nowadays in the urban cores of the cities they are situated in. All their clock mechanisms are still functioning properly. Former territory of Montenegro started being under Ottoman government in 1496, when former vassal Djuradj Crnojevic was dismissed and his brother Stevan was chosen to take his place. Montenegrin territory was included into Skadar sanjak 1 as a special area. (Stanojevic, 1976, 176) Dominating fortified settlements were Pljevlja, Medun, Zabljak, Novi, Risan, Bar and Ulcinj. The most developed urban core was Pljevlja, or Taslidza 2 . Pljevlja was the headquarters of Herzegovina sanjak (1576-1573), having one (and only) remaining mosque, named after Husein pasha Boljanic. This city was included in territory of Montenegro in 1913. (Kujovic, 2006, 3-16) There are such five facilities like this on Montenegrin territory, situated in five cities (Fig.1). Four of them are completely authentic towers (Ulcinj, Bar, Podgorica, Pljevlja), while the clock tower in Herceg-Novi is only partially of Ottoman origin. Its initial purpose wasn’t such, as it was originally built to be one of the towers of the city fortress. There is another one clock tower left in Montenegro. Situated in Kotor, it was built in 1602. It is not a part of Ottoman Empire cultural heritage, because Kotor was mostly governed by Venetian Republic. Ulcinj, Bar and Herceg-Novi are situated on the Adriatic coast and Podgorica is located in the south-continental part of Montenegro. Pljevlja is the northernmost municipality of Montenegro, situated near border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. This clock tower has different features in style comparing to those in Podgorica, Bar and Ulcinj. Even though they are reconstructed, all these clock towers are preserved in their authentic shape. Their significance is inasmuch larger because of the fact that Montenegro is a small country, occupying small area and not having much population (13 812km 2 and 625 266 inhabitants on the 2011 listing of population). (Statistical Office of Montenegro, 2011) Considering this space, number of clock towers is not big; however comparing to other countries in vicinity that were parts of Ottoman Empire (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia), it is much larger than in Serbia, which was under Ottoman Empire longer and occupying larger area. Until now, clock towers included in this paper were not thoroughly described nor examined from every aspect. Bajro Agovic, in his book Turbeta i sahat kule u Crnoj Gori , (Agovic, 2015) gives a description but without any significant or checked data about clock towers. However, some of his data direct to real and authentic sources. This book enlists Herceg-Novi clock tower as Ottoman Empire cultural heritage, which is only half true. This fact, considered to be true for a long time, was arguably denied and explained by Zorica Cubrilovic, in her work Istrazivanje kule gradskog sata u Herceg-Novom . (Cubrovic, 2009, 48-66) Hakki Acun, in his thorough monograph followed by photo materials and illustrations of Osmanli Imperatoglu Sat Kuleri (Acun, 2011, 178-181) maps and describes only two clock towers in Montenegro, those situated in Podgorica and Bar. However, the same author states in the introduction of his book that this is the first time that audience can be introduced to Ottoman clock towers, despite the fact that he hadn’t seen such facilities in Iraq, Palestine, Israel or Montenegro. This scientific paper complements mosaic of his researches argumentatively, with two more clock towers plus another one, partially originating from Ottoman Empire, depicted. The oldest and the most lavish clock tower is the one in Pljevlja, being one of the oldest in Ottoman Empire. Towers in Bar, Ulcinj and Podgorica were constructed approximately at the same time and have identical style features. Having in mind the fact that Montenegrin cities with clock towers, weren't always parts of the unique administrative unit, historical context was explained for each city individually. The aim of this work is to give as much details as possible about clock towers in Montenegro originating from Ottoman period, describe them thoroughly and present them from the historical context, time of originating, style features, current condition and the extent of their protection as cultural monument. This paper should contribute to completing data about clock towers on territories of former Ottoman Empire. In this work, there are recordings of clock towers with their dimensions presented, foundations, cross sections and proportional relations as well as archive photo material from original sources. Key words: clock towers, Montenegro, Ottoman period, cultural heritage, landmarks Total number of words: 7836

Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt

Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt

Y-chromosomal analysis of Greek Cypriots reveals a primarily common pre-Ottoman paternal ancestry with Turkish Cypriots.

Genetics can provide invaluable information on the ancestry of the current inhabitants of Cyprus. A Y-chromosome analysis was performed to (i) determine paternal ancestry among the Greek Cypriot (GCy) community in the context of the Central and Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East; and (ii) identify genetic similarities and differences between Greek Cypriots (GCy) and Turkish Cypriots (TCy). Our haplotype-based analysis has revealed that GCy and TCy patrilineages derive primarily from a single gene pool and show very close genetic affinity (low genetic differentiation) to Calabrian Italian and Lebanese patrilineages. In terms of more recent (past millennium) ancestry, as indicated by Y-haplotype sharing, GCy and TCy share much more haplotypes between them than with any surrounding population (7–8% of total haplotypes shared), while TCy also share around 3% of haplotypes with mainland Turks, and to a lesser extent with North Africans. In terms of Y-haplogroup frequencies, again GCy and TCy show very similar distributions, with the predominant haplogroups in both being J2a-M410, E-M78, and G2-P287. Overall, GCy also have a similar Y-haplogroup distribution to non-Turkic Anatolian and Southwest Caucasian populations, as well as Cretan Greeks. TCy show a slight shift towards Turkish populations, due to the presence of Eastern Eurasian (some of which of possible Ottoman origin) Y-haplogroups. Overall, the Y-chromosome analysis performed, using both Y-STR haplotype and binary Y-haplogroup data puts Cypriot in the middle of a genetic continuum stretching from the Levant to Southeast Europe and reveals that despite some differences in haplotype sharing and haplogroup structure, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots share primarily a common pre-Ottoman paternal ancestry.

Did Ottoman Sultans Ban Print?

This paper argues that the study of Ottoman printing developed from the European experience of print, and that this history continues to impact contemporary scholarship on the topic unduly. To illustrate this point, the paper provides a factual overview for incidents of printing among Ottomans and compares them to their historiographical portrayal. It then goes on to chart the life-cycle of the rumor that two Ottoman sultans banned print as it originated in early modern Europe, was adopted by nineteenth century Ottomans, and stabilized through twentieth century historians. The primary sources are texts of early modern European and Ottoman origin, and contemporary western and Middle Eastern origin.

Umut UZER, An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism: Between Turkish Ethnicity and Islamic Identity

The scholarship on Turkish nationalism has traditionally focused on the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic, often examining how the imperial ruling elites gradually came to terms with the transition from imperial attachments to narrower ethnic belongings. Since the early 2000s, however, as political Islam has begun to gain a more prominent position in Turkish political life, the studies on Turkish nationalism have also shifted gear. While scholars never really ditched aside the broader emphasis on the Ottoman origins, a range of new studies such as the ones by Soner Çağaptay, Gavin D. Brockett, Behlül Özkan, and Jenny White began to tackle the rise of what one may call the conservative and Islamist strands of Turkish nationalism since the Second World War.

A Peace for a Prince: The Reception of a Safavid Child Hostage at the Ottoman Court

The twelve-year long Ottoman-Safavid War ended in 1590, when the newly enthroned Safavid king, Shah ʿAbbas sent his six year old nephew to the Ottoman court as a condition of peace. The arrival of this child prince, Haydar Mirza, his large retinue, and the gifts he brought for the sultan incited much enthusiasm and curiosity among contemporary observers. These were recorded in official histories, archival documents, manuscript paintings, and poems of Ottoman, Safavid, Venetian, and Habsburg origin. Through a cross-reading of authors with diverse political motivations, this essay demonstrates the multiplicity of ways in which the prince’s role as a social agent and mediator was interpreted during and after his transfer. A close comparative reading of these textual accounts and images suggests that the diplomatic encounter and its subtleties may never be described fully by the overarching goals of panegyric texts or selected episodes captured in narrative illustration.

The Ottoman origins of capitalism: uneven and combined development and Eurocentrism

AbstractThe history of capitalism's origins is unmistakably Eurocentric, placing sixteenth-century developments in politics, economy, culture, and ideology squarely within the unique context of Europe. And while the disciplinary remit of International Relations (IR) should offer a way out of such European provincialism, it too has been built on largely Eurocentric assumptions. In Eurocentric approaches, the Ottoman Empire has been absent, passive, or merely a comparative foil against which the specificity and superiority of Europe has been defined. And yet, the Ottoman Empire was arguably the most powerful actor in the Early Modern period. In this article, I argue that any history of capitalism's origins must therefore account for the historical importance of the Ottomans. In doing so, this article seeks to address the non-European blind-spot, both in theorisations of capitalism's origins and in IR theory, by reincorporating the material significance of the Ottoman Empire in historical processes, which led to the transition to capitalism. I do so by utilising the theory of Uneven and Combined Development, and in the process seek to defend its credentials as a non-Eurocentric social theory on the one hand and as a sociologically and historically sensitive theory of international relations on the other.

Nespresso: Branding the "Ultimate Coffee Experience"

Nespresso: Branding the "Ultimate Coffee Experience"

The Frontiers of the Ottoman World, ed. A.C.S. Peacock

Ottoman history is one of constantly moving frontiers. In neither territorial nor political terms did the early Ottomans take over an existing state. Therefore, almost all regions which ultimately comprised ‘the Ottoman world’ were at some time frontier areas, both horizontally in terms of extending their authority through conquest and defence, and vertically in terms of consolidating this authority through the pragmatic assimilation of local societies. While the nature of fourteenth-century Ottoman frontier society has been addressed as part of the all-consuming debate on Ottoman origins, this volume is the first to attempt to assess the characteristics of Ottoman frontier history over the longer term. The twenty-five essays in this collection are organised under four headings: fortifications, administration, relations between rulers and ruled, and the frontier economy. Most address the empire's most distant frontiers—maritime, desert or militarised borders—in the middle and late Ottoman periods. They vary considerably in approach, from a relatively traditional, archive-based account of boundary delineation in late nineteenth-century Yemen (Isa Blumi), through a study of environmental constraints on the establishment of Ottoman border defences in sixteenth-century Hungary (Gábor Ágoston), to archaeological research into the construction, use and manning of fortifications along the Syrian hajj route (Andrew Petersen).

‘Holy War Made in Germany’? Ottoman Origins of the 1914 Jihad

From the beginning the 1914 Ottoman jihad proclamation was portrayed by the Allies as the linchpin of a German scheme to revolutionize Muslim populations in the territories of Berlin’s enemies: in British Egypt and India, in French North Africa, and in the Russian Caucasus and Central Asia. This article questions the cliché of the German jihad by situating the 1914 declaration in its deeper Ottoman historical context. Did the Ottomans need Berlin’s blandishments to convince them of the advantages of issuing a jihad ( jihād) declaration in 1914?

Steal Of A Turk

Like the rise of the English novel, the rise of the English thoroughbred is a Long Restoration story. It is also a story of East – West cultural exchange, hybridization, and appropriation, the West sometimes trading with but also sometimes stealing from and stealthily assimilating commodities from the East. Between 1650 and 1750, more than 200 horses designated as Oriental were imported into England from the Levant. The English thoroughbred horse, an eighteenth-century invention, and a cultural icon of British imperial superiority, in fact has an Asian, primarily Ottoman origin. Sporting aristocrats and fox hunting squires enacted their typically English or Irish identities on the backs of horses whose equine superiority owed its very existence to the Long Restoration romance with the East.

Architecture and the Search for Ottoman Origins in the Tanzimat Period

Architecture and the Search for Ottoman Origins in the Tanzimat Period

Changing Perceptions of the Ottoman Empire: The Early Centuries

This article surveys twentieth-century historical scholarship devoted to various aspects of the first four centuries of Ottoman history. It opens with the end-of-the-century ‘good news’ of an increasing number of studies accessible to wider audiences. The article then goes on to note that archivally based social and economic history writing quantitatively outperformed work on facets of Ottoman cultural history. Religious and legal studies, art history, and, to a lesser extent, Ottoman historiography flourished to a greater degree than literary history. The article closes with some reflections on major preoccupations of the twentieth-century study of the pre-modern Ottoman Empire, namely, Ottoman origins, the absence of the empire from comparative studies, and the question of decline.

Between Chieftaincy and Knighthood: A Comparative Study of Ottoman and Safavid Origins

Tracing the history of the Ottoman and Safavid empires back to the Middle Period of Islamic history, this article focuses on their origins in the chieftaincies and the hybrid cultural formations of the Anatolian regions. While considering the inter/intracivilizational historical context of their respective rise to power, it is argued that the structural makeup of the empires differed primarily in their disparate forms of Sufi-knightly cultures, identified here as knightly-heroic (Ottoman) and millenarian-populist (Safavid), which is essentially tied to two distinctive types of tribal political organizations: frontierchieftaincy (Ottoman) and sectarian-chieftaincy (Safavid). Although the original Ottoman and Safavid chieftaincies, based on the militant Ghazi and Qizilbash orders, dissolved once the roaming bands of warriors were replaced by more settled military formations in the course of long-term state-building processes, the influence of their Sufi-knightly cultural heritages is still manifest in modern Iranian and Turkish societies.