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The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs
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About This Book
This major new history of the Ottoman dynasty reveals 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.
Reviews
"oversimplification or airy generalisation is never advisable."
"This book is impressively well-structured ..."
"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 ..."
"Until Moscow launched its pogrom-genocides, Turks and Armenians had lived together in relative harmony for many centuries in eastern Anatolia."
"Baer's account of the rise, growth, stagnation and fall of the house of Osman over more than 600 years...is a major achievement He is a writer in full command of his subject and of a wide range of Turkish and western sources."
"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."
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