The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs

by Marc David Baer

Overview

A “panoramic and thought-provoking” (The Guardian) history of the Ottoman dynasty, revealing 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. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541673793
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	10/10/2023
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	126,078
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Marc David Baer is professor of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of six books, including Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe, which won the Albert Hourani Prize. He lives in London.   

Table of Contents

Author's Note vii

Maps x

Introduction: The White Castle 1

1 The Beginning: Gazi Osman and Orhan 14

2 The Sultan and His Converted Slaves: Murad I 34

3 Resurrecting the Dynasty: Bayezid I, Mehmed I, and Murad II 52

4 Conquering the Second Rome: Mehmed II 72

5 A Renaissance Prince: Mehmed II 96

6 A Pious Leader Faces Enemies at Home and Abroad: Bayezid II 113

7 Magnificence: From Selim I to the First Ottoman Caliph, Suleiman I 130

8 Sultanic Saviours 159

9 The Ottoman Age of Discovery 165

10 No Way Like the 'Ottoman Way' 188

11 Harem Means Home 203

12 Bearded Men and Beardless Youths 229

13 Being Ottoman, Being Roman: From Murad III to Osman II 240

14 Return of the Gazi: Mehmed IV 269

15 A Jewish Messiah in the Ottoman Palace 287

16 The Second Siege of Vienna and the Sweet Waters of Europe: From Mehmed IV to Ahmed III 301

17 Reform: Breaking the Cycle of Rebellion from Selim III to Abdülaziz I 328

18 Repression: A Modern Caliph, Abdülhamid II 363

19 Looking Within: The Ottoman Orient 381

20 Saving the Dynasty from Itself: Young Turks 395

21 The Genocide of the Armenians and the First World War: Talat Pasha 422

22 The End: Gazi Mustafa Kemal 453

Conclusion: The Ottoman Past Endures 462

Acknowledgments 469

List of Ottoman Rulers and Their Reigns 470

Notes 472

Index 525

Editorial Reviews

This forceful history takes aim at the notion that the Ottomans represent the antithesis of Western Europe, asking readers ‘to conceptualise a Europe that is not merely Christian.’”—New Yorker

“Mr. Baer organizes his material according to contemporary concerns…thereby eking out surprisingly fresh insights from this hitherto well-plowed terrain… Highly readable, original and thorough.”—Wall Street Journal

“Highly readable... Baer’s fine book gives a panoramic and thought-provoking account of over half a millennium of Ottoman and — it now goes without saying — European history.”—Guardian

"Magnificent… [An] important and hugely readable book — a model of well-written, accessible scholarship."

—Financial Times

“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.”—Spectator

“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

“A wildly ambitious and entertainingly lurid history."—Times

“Sweeping… Baer’s elegantly written narrative is full of bloody state building…along with intriguing, counterintuitive takes on Ottoman culture.”

—Publishers Weekly

“There’s no study more masterful than Baer’s on the lengthy rule of the Ottoman Empire…Baer is especially skilled at presenting extensive information in an engaging and accessible way.”—Library Journal

“A book as sweeping, colorful, and rich in extraordinary characters as the empire which it describes.”—Tom Holland, author of Dominion

“A compellingly readable account of one of the great world empires from its origins in thirteenth century to modern times. Drawing on contemporary Turkish and European sources, Marc David Baer situates the Ottomans squarely at the overlap of European and Middle Eastern history.  Blending the sacred and the profane, the social and the political, the sublime and the absurd, Baer brings his subject to life in rich vignettes. An outstanding book.”—Eugene Rogan, author of The Fall of the Ottomans

“A superb, gripping, and refreshing new history—finely written and filled with fascinating characters and analysis—that places the dynasty where it belongs: at the center of European history.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The Romanovs

“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

“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.”
 —Peter Sarris, University of Cambridge

From the Publisher

08/30/2021

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

★ 08/01/2021

In his latest book, Baer (history, London Sch. of Economics; Honored by the Glory of Islam) expertly captures the undercurrents of Ottoman history that he says made the empire's rule perilous at times: the recurring threat (at least, in the empire's view) posed by dervish sects and the emergence of the Jewish messiah Sabbatai Zevi in the 17th century; the influence of Janissaries on imperial policy; and the eventual immuring of the sultan in his palace and his removal from active governance. The most useful insight Baer offers is that historians do the Ottomans a disservice by treating them as a non-European "Other." In their glory days, the emperors in fact saw themselves as inheritors of Western tradition, Baer writes, and they governed a population that was at least one-third Rum (Roman). Baer effectively explains that the winds of unrest that swept the West in the 17th century swept the East as well, so Western historians do no service to history by slighting the commonalities between Western nation-states and the Ottomans. VERDICT There's no study more masterful than Baer's on the lengthy rule of the Ottoman Empire, from its founding in the 13th century to its collapse in 1924. Baer is especially skilled at presenting extensive information in an engaging and accessible way.—David Keymer, Cleveland

Library Journal