The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs

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How indeed did Filippo Brunelleschi, a goldsmith with no formal architectural training, manage to create the most sublime monument of the Renaissance? Perhaps because the Ilkanid Oljeittu's turquoise-blue, double-shell, domed mausoleum, built at the beginning of the fourteenth century at Sultaniye in Iran, anticipated Brunelleschi's double-shell, domed cathedral in Florence by a century. It may in fact have been its inspiration." The Ottoman state was, doubtless, dual nature by design. The Muslim, Turkish sultans in still predominantly Christian Anatolia and later completely Christian Thrace could only rule by co-opting, allying and converting local elites, Greeks, Slavs, Italians, Jews and Armenians. The Ottoman court continued to recruit outsiders down to the 19th century, when defeated Polish revolutionaries joined the sultan’s army as pashas (and converted to Islam). In its heyday, the empire forcefully recruited Christian boys into the elite infantry units, the Janissaries, and kidnapped Christian girls for the imperial harem. As a result of this latter practice, Muslim sultans could converse easily in Greek or Italian, the language of their mothers. Mehmet II, the conqueror of Constantinople, Baer reminds us, collected scientific and literary works in both those languages.

The Ottomans by Marc David Baer | Waterstones The Ottomans by Marc David Baer | Waterstones

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. Reading the history of an empire starts to warp your thinking after a bit – you start thinking about what conduces to the health of the empire and neglect thinking about whether the very concept of empire is a good thing.

Suivez-nous

Add to this the dry narrative approach - a classic "one damned thing after another" approach to history, with little explanation (and the few explanations that do come tending towards the "it's complicated" line) - and sadly I think most people would be better off turning to Wikipedia. Not least because some things are skipped over so fast - the Battle of Lepanto gets about half a line, for instance - that nothing is really given a chance to sink in beyond the "Ottomans = European" argument.

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

This is a book with a clear point to make: namely, that the Ottoman Empire was a European empire, and it is impossible to properly understand the story of Europe without integrating into that story the Ottomans and their empire. The Ottomans saw themselves as the successors to the Roman Empire: much of its territory encompassed lands formerly under Roman (and then Byzantine) control. Its European territories, in particular in what is now Turkish East Thrace and the Balkans, were early conquests in the expansion of the Ottoman Empire and were core to the Ottomans' conception of themselves and their empire. With the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the capital of the empire was the 'Second Rome', with its conqueror, Sultan Mehmed II, styling himself the new Kayser-i Rum. How did an obscure thirteenth century Anatolian beylik emerge as a vast continent-spanning Ottoman empire? How then did it come to wither away in the nineteenth century, with its eventual replacement by Ataturk's new Turkish Republic 1 in 1922? Marc David Baer, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, tells the story in his new history of the Ottoman Empire, also reflecting on how we think about the Ottomans today - and why it matters. Origins 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. A good corrective to neglect of the Ottoman Empire, even if its arguments are often a bit overstated.

Revue arménienne des questions contemporaines | Numéros

Recounting the Ottomans' remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire, Marc David Baer traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic and Byzantine heritage; how they used both religious toleration and conversion to integrate conquered peoples; and how, in the nineteenth century, they embraced exclusivity, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the dynasty's demise after the First World War. Upending Western concepts of the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration, the Reformation, this account challenges our understandings of sexuality, orientalism and genocide. The Ottoman Empire had many faces, but has Europe (i.e. the non-Turkish bit of Europe), and perhaps Turkey itself, chosen to forget the European nature of that empire? In the telling of Marc David Baer, it has, and his book is a conscious effort to rebalance the portrayal of the Ottomans. Religious tolerance Baer, professor of international history at the London School of Economics, defines the “Ottomans’ tripartite heritage” as “Byzantine-Roman, Turco-Mongol and Muslim” – and a “Eurasian amalgam”. The Ottomans became the biggest trading partner of western Europe in the Renaissance era. King Henry VIII of England enjoyed dressing in their fashionable styles. Suleiman I (who ruled 1520-1566), the first sultan to call himself “caliph”, fought the Persian Safavids in the east and the Habsburgs in the west. I’d never understood the Crimean War at all – it’s just this mess that Victorian Britons return from – and I still can’t say it makes sense to me, any more than any war makes sense, but at least Baer’s history puts it in some kind of context. Likewise, the Balkan wars must interest students of military history, early tryouts for the new technologies of mass slaughter more extensively employed in World War I, with the Ottoman Army trained and directed by Germans. But the Ottoman sultans were not just Caesars. They also celebrated their pastoral origins as nomadic successors to the Mongolian khans. In addition, with the conquest of Mamluk Egypt in 1517 by Selim I, they were custodians of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina; Suleiman I claimed the title of 'caliph', successor to Muhammad and leader of the Ummah, the global community of Muslims.