Series in Turkey
Books in Turkey
1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West
A gripping exploration of the fall of Constantinople and its connection to the world we live in today. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 signaled a shift in history and the end of the Byzantium Empire. Roger Crowley's readable and comprehensive account of the battle between Mehmet II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Constantine XI, the 57th emperor of Byzantium, illuminates the period in history that was a precursor to the current conflict between the West and the Middle East. For a thousand years Constantinople was quite simply "the city": fabulously wealthy, imperial, intimidating - and Christian. Singlehandedly it blunted early Arab enthusiasm for Holy War; when a second wave of Islamic warriors swept out of the Asian steppes in the Middle Ages, Constantinople was the ultimate prize: "The Red Apple." It was a city that had always lived under threat. On average it had survived a siege every forty years for a millennium – until the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet II, twenty-one years old and hungry for glory, rode up to the walls in April 1453 with a huge army, "numberless as the stars." 1453 is the taut, vivid story of this final struggle for the city, told largely through the accounts of eyewitnesses. For fifty-five days a tiny group of defenders defied the huge Ottoman army in a seesawing contest fought on land, at sea, and underground. During the course of events, the largest cannon ever built was directed against the world’s most formidable defensive system, Ottoman ships were hauled overland into the Golden Horn, and the morale of defenders was crucially undermined by unnerving portents. At the center is the contest between two inspirational leaders, Mehmed II and Constantine XI, fighting for empire and religious faith, and an astonishing finale in a few short hours on May 29, 1453 – a defining moment for medieval history. 1453 is both a gripping work of narrative history and an account of the war between Christendom and Islam that still has echoes in the modern world.
A Short History of the Middle East: From Ancient Empires to Islamic State
Situated at the crossroads of three continents, the Middle East has confounded the ambition of conquerors and peacemakers alike. Christianity, Judaism and Islam all had their genesis in the region but with them came not just civilization and religion but also some of the great struggles of history. This book makes sense of the shifting sands of Middle Eastern history, beginning with the early cultures of the area and moving on to the Roman and Persian Empires; the growth of Christianity; the rise of Islam; the invasions from the east; Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes; the Ottoman Turks and the rise of radicalism in the modern world symbolized by Islamic State.
Lords of the Horizons
"A work of dazzling beauty...the rare coming together of historical scholarship and curiosity about distant places with luminous writing." -- The New York Times Book Review Since the Turks first shattered the glory of the French crusaders in 1396, the Ottoman Empire has exerted a long, strong pull on Western minds. For six hundred years, the Empire swelled and declined. Islamic, martial, civilized, and tolerant, in three centuries it advanced from the dusty foothills of Anatolia to rule on the Danube and the Nile; at the Empire's height, Indian rajahs and the kings of France beseeched its aid. For the next three hundred years the Empire seemed ready to collapse, a prodigy of survival and decay. Early in the twentieth century it fell. In this dazzling evocation of its power, Jason Goodwin explores how the Ottomans rose and how, against all odds, they lingered on. In the process he unfolds a sequence of mysteries, triumphs, treasures, and terrors unknown to most American readers. This was a place where pillows spoke and birds were fed in the snow; where time itself unfolded at a different rate and clocks were banned; where sounds were different, and even the hyacinths too strong to sniff. Dramatic and passionate, comic and gruesome, Lords of the Horizons is a history, a travel book, and a vision of a lost world all in one.
The Ottoman Army of the Napoleonic Wars, 1784-1815
The Ottoman Empire was only marginally affected by the conflicts of the Napoleonic era; however, the period between the 1780s and 1820s was very important for the history and institutions of the multicultural state. Scholars working on the Ottomans in the Balkans, Anatolia, Egypt, and Syria have reached something of a consensus about these years as a watershed for the Ottomans. It was a moment when reform became necessary not just as a palace experiment, but as a matter of life and death for the dynasty and empire alike. Survival in the Ottoman dynastic context meant engaging in a series of multilateral negotiations, not only with foreign powers, but also with a host of new military, intellectual, and religious elite groups. These emerged precisely because of shrinking borders, mobile military forces, and refugee populations. The struggle for survival was central to the changing dynamics of Ottoman society, especially in a period when war was generally proving too costly in human and economic terms. The toll on local society was large, and also involved the territories of the empire which were not directly within the war zones. This book examines the changes and development of the Ottoman army from its campaigns against the Bedouin in Iraq in the 1780s until the Serbian uprisings in 1804-13 and 1815. It also includes a detailed description of the dress and equipment of the Ottoman soldiers of this period.