Changing Perceptions of the Ottoman Empire: The Early Centuries

Abstract

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.

Notes

 1. For their help with coverage and bibliography, I thank Suraiya Faroqhi, Jane Hathaway, Heath Lowry, Amy Singer, and Madeline Zilfi.

 2. Important work on military history includes Vernon Parry and M.A. Yapp (eds.), War, Technology, and Society in the Middle East (London and New York, 1975), and, more recently, Caroline Finkel, The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary, 1593–1606 (Vienna, 1988), and Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare (New Brunswick, NJ, 1999). See also Gábor Agoston, ‘Ottoman Warfare in Europe, 1453–1826’, in J. Black (ed.), European Warfare, 1453–1815 (Basingstoke and New York, 1999), pp.118–44.

 3. Patrick Balfour Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (New York, 1977); Andrew Wheatcroft, The Ottomans (London, 1993); Jason Goodwin, Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1998); Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453–1924 (London, 1995); John Freely, Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in Istanbul (London and New York, 1999); Godfrey Goodwin, The Private World of Ottoman Women (London, 1997).

 4. Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe (New York, 1982).

 5. Robert Mantran (ed.), Histoire de l'empire ottoman (Paris, 1989); Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2002); Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power (New York, 2002); Caroline Finkel, Osman's Dream: The story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (London, Forthcoming).

 6. Rhoads Murphey, ‘Süleyman I and the Conquest of Hungary: Ottoman Manifest Destiny or a Delayed Reaction to Charles V's Universalist Vision’, Journal of Early Modern History, 5 (2001), pp.197–221; Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000); R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca, NY, 1997).

 7. Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (Paris, 1949); Jon Mandaville, ‘The Ottoman Court Records of Syria and Jordan’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 86 (1966), pp.311–19.

 8. Amy Singer, Palestinian Peasants and Ottoman Officials: Rural Administration around Sixteenth-Century Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1994); Huri İslamoglu-İnan, State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire: Agrarian Power Relations and Rural Economic Development in Ottoman Anatolia during the Sixteenth Century (Leiden and New York, 1994).

 9. İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarsılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, 4 vols. (Ankara, 1947–73); Osmanlı Devletinin İlmiye Teşkilatı (Ankara, 1965); Halil İnalcık, Hicrî 835 tarihli sûret-i defter-i sancak-i Arnavid (Ankara, 1954); ‘Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600–1700’, Archivum Ottomanicum, 6 (1980), pp.283–337; Ömer Lütfi Barkan, Süleymaniye Cami ve İmareti İnsaatı (1550–1557) (Ankara, 1972); Nicoara Beldiceanu and Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr, Recherches sur la province de Qaraman au XVIe siècle: Etudes et actes (Leiden, 1968); Stanford J. Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization of Ottoman Egypt, 1517–1798 (Princeton, NJ, 1962); Nikolai Todorov, The Balkan City 1400–1900 (Seattle, WA, 1983); Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu, Osmanlı Belgelerinin Dili (Diplomatik) (Istanbul, 1994).

10. Heath W. Lowry, Studies in Defterology: Ottoman Society in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Istanbul, 1992).

11. Michael Cook, Population Pressure in Rural Anatolia, 1450–1600 (London and New York, 1972); I. Metin Kunt, The Sultan's Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government (New York, 1983); Linda Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560–1660 (Leiden and New York, 1996); Şevket Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, 2000); Nelly Hanna, Making Big Money in 1600: The Life and Times of Ismail Ibn Taqiyya, Egyptian Merchant (Syracuse, NY, 1998); Gilles Veinstein, ‘L'hivernage en campagne, talon d'Achille du système militaire ottoman classique: A propos des sipâhî de Roumélie en 1559–1560 ’, Studia Islamica, 68 (1983), pp.109–48; idem, ‘Une communauté ottomane: Les Juifs d 'Avlonya (Valona) dans la deuxième moitié du XVIe siècle ’, in Etat et société dans l'empire ottoman, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles: La terre, la guerre, les communautés (Aldershot, 1994); Suraiya Faroqhi, Towns and Townsmen of Anatolia: Trade, Crafts, and Food Production in an Urban Setting, 1520–1650 (Cambridge, 1984); Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517–1693 (London, 1994); André Raymond, ‘Les grands waqfs et l 'organisation de l 'espace urbain à Alep et au Caire à l'époque ottomane (XVIe–XVIIe siècles)’, Bulletin d'Etudes Orientales, 31 (1979), pp.113–28; idem, Grandes villes arabes à l'époque ottomane (Paris, 1985); Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Egypt's Adjustment to Ottoman Rule: Institutions, Waqf, and Architecture in Cairo (16th and 17th Centuries) (Leiden, New York, and Köln, 1994); Jane Hathaway, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdağlıs (Cambridge, 1997); Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (London and New York, 1993).

12. Ömer Lütfi Barkan, XV ve XVIıncı Asırlarda Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Ziraî Ekonominin Hukukî ve Malî Esasları, I: Kanunlar (Istanbul, 1943). Ottoman kanunnames have been more recently studied by Ahmet Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukukî Tahlilleri, 9 vols. (Istanbul, 1990–96).

13. Ronald Jennings, ‘Kadi, Court, and Legal Procedure in 17th C. Ottoman Kayseri’, Studia Islamica, 48 (1978), pp.133–72; idem, ‘Limitations of the Judicial Powers of the Kadi in 17th C. Ottoman Kayseri’, Studia Islamica, 50 (1979), pp.151–84; Özer Ergenç, ‘Osmanlı Klasik Dönemindeki ^c Eşraf ve A'yan' Üzerine Bazı Bilgiler’, Osmanlı Araştırmaları, 3 (1982), pp.105–13; idem, ‘Osmanlı Şehirlerindeki Yönetim Kurumlarının Niteliği Üzerinde Bazı Düşünceler’, in VIII. Türk Tarhi Kongresi Kongreye Sunulan Bildiriler (Ankara, 1981); Amnon Cohen, Jewish Life under Islam: Jerusalem in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1984); Haim Gerber, Economy and Society in an Ottoman City: Bursa, 1600–1700 (Jerusalem, 1988); Judith Tucker, Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge, 1985).

14. Dror Ze'evi, An Ottoman Century: The District of Jerusalem in the 1600s (Albany, NY, 1996); Rossitsa Gradeva, ‘Orthodox Christians in the Kadi Courts: The Practice of the Sofia Sheriat Court, Seventeenth Century’, Islamic Law and Society, 4 (1997), pp.37–69; Yvonne Seng, ‘Standing at the Gates of Justice: Women in the Law Courts of Early Sixteenth-Century Üsküdar, Istanbul’, in S. Hirsch and M. Lazarus-Black (eds.), Contested States: Law, Hegemony and Resistance (New York, 1994), pp.184-206; İşık Tamdoğan-Abel, ‘Les Han, ou l'étranger dans la ville ottomane’, in F. Georgeon and P. Dumont (eds.), Vivre dans l'empire ottoman: Sociabilités et relations intercommunautaires (XVIIIe–XXe siècles) (Paris, 1997); Madeline Zilfi (ed.), Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era (Leiden and New York, 1997); Amira Sonbol (ed.), Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History (Syracuse, NY, 1996); Gavin Hambly (ed.), Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, Piety (New York, 1998); Najwa Al-Qattan, ‘Dhimmis in the Muslim Court: Legal Autonomy and Religious Discrimination’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 31 (1999), pp.429–44.

15. Dror Ze'evi, ‘The Use of Shari ^c a Court Records as a Source for Middle Eastern Social History: A Reappraisal’, Islamic Law and Society, 5 (1998), pp.35–56.

16. Cornell H. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali (1593–1606) (Princeton, 1986); Franz Babinger, Mehmed der Eroberer und seine Zeit: Weltenstürmer einer Zeitenwende (Munich, 1953).

17. E.J.W. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, 6 vols. (London, 1900–1907); Walter Andrews, Poetry's Voice, Society's Song (Seattle, WA, 1985); Victoria R. Holbrooke, The Unreadable Shores of Love: Turkish Modernity and Mystic Romance (Austin, TX, 1994); Kemal Silay, An Anthology of Turkish Literature (Bloomington, IN, 1996); Wolfram Eberhard and Pertev Naili Boratav, Typen türkischer Volksmärchen (Wiesbaden, 1953); İlhan Başgöz, Turkish Folklore and Oral Literature: Selected Essays (Bloomington, IN, 1998); Andreas Tietze, The Lingua Franca in the Levant: Turkish Nautical Terms of Italian and Greek Origin (Urbana, IL, 1958) (with Henry and Renée Kahane); idem, Wörterbuch der Griechischen, Slavischen, Arabischen, und Persischen Lehnwörter im Anatolischen Türkisch (Istanbul, 1999).

18. Friedrich Giese, Die altosmanischen Anonymen Chroniken (Breslau, 1922); Franz Babinger, Die frühosmanischen Jahrbücher des Urudsch (Hannover, 1925); Franz Taeschner, Die altosmanische Chronik des Aşıq paşazade (Leipzig, 1929); V.L. Ménage, Neshri's History of the Ottomans: The Sources and the Development of the Text (London and New York, 1964); Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995).

19. Christine Woodhull, Talikizade's Şehname-i Hümayun (Berlin, 1983); Gabi Piterberg, ‘Speech Acts and Written Texts: A Reading of a Seventeenth-century Ottoman Historiographic Episode’, Poetics Today, 14 (1993), pp.387–418; Lewis V. Thomas, A Study of Naima, ed. N. Itzkowitz (New York, 1972); Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire.

20. Coleman Barks, with John Moyne, Whoever Brought Me Here Will Have to Take Me Home (London, 1998); William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teaching of Rumi (Albany, NY, 1983); Mehmet Fuad Köprülü, Türk Edebiyatında İlk Mutasavvıflar (Istanbul, 1919); Robert Dankoff and Gary Leiser (trans.), Early Mystics in Turkish Literature (London, forthcoming); Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı, Alevi-Bektaşi Nefesleri (Istanbul, 1963); F.W. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans (Oxford, 1929); John Kingsley Birge, The Bektashi Order of Dervishes (London and Hartford, 1937); Irène Melikoff, Destan d'Umur Pacha (Dusturname-i Enverî) (Paris, 1954); idem, Hadji Bektach, un mythe et ses avatars: Genèse et évolution du Soufisme populaire en Turquie (Leiden, 1998); Michael Winter, Society and Religion in Early Ottoman Egypt: Studies in the Writings of ^cAbd Al-Wahhab Al-Sharani (New Brunswick, NJ, 1982); Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, Osmanlı Toplumunda Zındıklar ve Mülhidler (Istanbul, 1998); Ahmet Karamustafa, God's Unruly Servants: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200–1550 (Salt Lake City, UT, 1994).

21. Some valuable work has been done on this subject: Hanna Sohrweide, ‘Der Sieg der Safawiden in Persien und seine Rückwirkungen auf die Schiiten Anatoliens im 16. Jahrhundert’, Der Islam, 41 (1965), pp.95–223; Colin Imber, ‘The Persecution of the Ottoman Shi ^c ites according to the Mühimme Defterleri, 1565-1585’, Der Islam, 56 (1979), pp.245–73; Fariba Zarinebaf-Shahr, ‘Qizilbash Heresy and Rebellion in Ottoman Anatolia during the Sixteenth Century’, Anatolia Moderna, 7 (1998), pp.1–15.

22. Uzunçarsılı, İlmiye Teşkilatı; Richard Repp, The Mufti of Istanbul: A Study in the Development of the Ottoman Learned Hierarchy (London, 1986); Hans Georg Majer, Vorstudien zur Geschichte der Ilmiye in osmanischen Reich (Munich, 1978); Madeline Zilfi, ‘The Kadizadelis: Discordant Revivalism in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 45 (1986), pp.251–69; idem, The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age, 1600–1800 (Minneapolis, MN, 1988).

23. Baber Johansen, The Islamic Law of Tax and Rent (London, 1988); Colin Imber, Ebu's-Su'ud: The Islamic Legal Tradition (Stanford, CA, 1997); Uriel Heyd, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law, ed. V. Menage (Oxford, 1973); Haim Gerber, State, Society, and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective (Albany, NY, 1994).

24. Oktay Aslanapa, Türk Sanatı, 2 vols. (Istanbul, 1972–73); Nurhan Atasoy, İbrahim Paşa Sarayı (Istanbul, 1972); Esin Atıl, Levni and the Sürname: The Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Festival (Istanbul, 1999); Esin Atıl (ed.), Turkish Art (Washington, DC, 1980); Aptullah Kuran, İlk Devir Osmanlı Mimarisinde Cami (Ankara, 1964); idem, Mimar Sinan (Istanbul, 1986); Godfrey Goodwin, A History of Ottoman Architecture (Baltimore, 1971); Gülru Necipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York and Cambridge, MA, 1991); idem, The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (Santa Monica, CA, 1995); Lucienne Thys-Şenocak, ‘The Yeni Valide Mosque Complex of Eminönü, Istanbul (1597–1665): Gender and Vision in Ottoman Architecture’, in D.F. Ruggles (ed.), Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation in Islamic Societies (Albany, NY, 2000); Tülay Artan, ‘The Kadirga Palace: An Architectural Reconstruction’, Muqarnas, 10 (1993), pp.201–11.

25. Filiz Çağman and Nurhan Atasoy, Turkish Miniature Painting (Istanbul, 1974); Walter Denny, The Ceramics of the Mosque of Rüstem Pasha and the Environment of Change (New York, 1977); idem, The Classical Tradition in Anatolian Carpets (Washington, DC, 2002); Howard Crane, Risale-i Mimariyye: An Early-Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Treatise on Architecture (Leiden, 1987); Raymond, ‘Les grands waqfs’; idem, Grandes villes arabes; Behrens-Abouseif, Egypt's Adjustment to Ottoman Rule.

26. Herbert A. Gibbons, The Foundations of the Ottoman Empire: A History of the Osmanlis up to the Death of Bayezid I (1300-1403) (New York, 1916); Mehmet Fuad Köprülü, Les origines de l'empire ottoman (Paris, 1935); Paul Wittek, The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1938); Rudi Paul Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (Bloomington, IN, 1983); Kafadar, Between Two Worlds.

27. Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1481 (Istanbul, 1990); Stephen Reinert, ‘From Niş to Kosovo Polje’, in E. Zachariadou (ed.), The Ottoman Emirate (1300–1389) (Rethymnon, 1993).

28. Speros Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley, 1971); Claude Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey: A General Survey of the Material and Spiritual Culture and History c. 1071–1330, trans. J. Jones-Williams (London, 1968); Zachariadou (ed.), The Ottoman Emirate; Kafadar, Between Two Worlds.

29. Kate Fleet, European and Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State: The Merchants of Genoa and Turkey (Cambridge, 1999); Halil İnalcık, ‘Osman Ghazi's Siege of Nicaea and the Battle of Bapheus’, in Zachariadou, The Ottoman Emirate, pp.77–99.

30. W.L. Langer and R.P. Blake, ‘The Rise of the Ottoman Turks and its Historical Background’, American Historical Review, 37 (1932), pp.468–505.

31. Andrew Hess, The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago, 1978); Daniel Goffman, Izmir and the Levantine World, 1500–1650 (Seattle, WA, 1990); idem, Britons in the Ottoman Empire, 1642–1660 (Seattle, WA, 1998); Palmira Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (Albany, NY, 1994); Molly Greene, A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Princeton, NJ, 2000); Nicolas Vatin, L'Ordre du Saint-Jean de Jérusalem, l'empire ottoman et la Méditerranée orientale entre les deux sièges de Rhodes, 1480–1522 (Paris, 1994); idem, Sultan Djem: Un prince ottoman dans l'Europe du XVe siècle (Ankara, 1997).

32. Salih Özbaran, ‘The Ottoman Turks and the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf, 1534–1581’, Journal of Asian History, 6/1 (1972), pp.45–87; idem, ‘Expansion in the Southern Seas’, in H. İnalcık and C. Kafadar (eds.), Süleymân the Second and His Time (Istanbul, 1993), pp.211–18; Bekir Kütükoğlu, Osmanlı-İran Siyasî Münasebetleri (Istanbul, 1993); Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, Les Ottomans, les Safavides et leurs voisins (Istanbul, 1986); idem, ‘The Eastern Policy of Süleyman the Magnificent, 1520–1533’, in İnalcık and Kafadar (eds.), Süleymân the Second and His Time, pp.219–28; Alan Fisher, The Crimean Tatars (Stanford, CA, 1978); Victor Ostapchuk, ‘The Publication of Documents on the Crimean Khanate in the Topkapı Sarayı: New Sources for the History of the Black Sea Basin’, Harvard Ukranian Studies, 6 (1982), pp.500–528; Darius Kolodziejczyk, Ottoman–Polish Relations (15th–18th Century): An Annotated Edition of ^cAhdnames and Other Documents (Leiden and Boston, 2000); Gustav Bayerle, Ottoman Diplomacy in Hungary: Letters from the Pashas of Buda, 1590–1593 (Bloomington, IN, 1972); Géza Dávid, ‘Administration in Ottoman Europe’, in M. Kunt and C. Woodhull (eds.), Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age (New York, 1995), pp.71–90; idem, Studies in Demographic and Administrative History of Ottoman Hungary (Istanbul, 1997); Pál Fodor, In Quest of the Golden Apple: Imperial Ideology, Politics, and Military Administration in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul, 2000); Agoston, ‘Ottoman Warfare in Europe, 1453–1826’.

33. Esin Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (Washington and New York, 1987); J.M. Rogers and R.M. Ward, Süleyman the Magnificent (London, 1988); Marthe Bernus Taylor et al., Soliman le Magnifique (Paris, 1990).

34. Kunt, The Sultan's Servants; Halil İnalcık, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600, trans. N. Itzkowitz and C. Imber (London, 1973); idem, ‘Military and Fiscal Transformation’; idem, ‘The Ottoman State: Economy and Society, 1300–1600’, in H. İnalcık with D. Quataert (eds.), An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914 (Cambridge, 1994), pp.11–409; Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca, NY, 1994); Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy; Ze'evi, An Ottoman Century.

35. Rifa'at Abou-el-Haj, The Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany, NY, 1991); Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats; Hathaway, The Politics of Households.

36. For other considerations of the periodization question, see Dror Ze'evi's essay in this issue and Jane Hathaway, ‘Problems of Periodization in Ottoman History: The Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries’, Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, 20/2 (1996), pp.25‐31; Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London and New York, 1964); Erik Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London, 1993); Michael Meeker, A Nation of Empire: The Ottoman Legacy of Turkish Modernity (Berkeley, 2002).