Ottoman Beginnings

Ottoman imperial history remains utterly fascinating to me, though my interests tend to focus on the sunset of empire rather than, as with this book set for release next week, its origins and early life. But about that latter phase we will soon be learning a lot more thank to The Beginnings of the Ottoman Empire by Clive Foss  (Oxford University Press, 2022), 288pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this: 

The Ottoman Empire ruled the near East, dominated the Mediterranean, and terrorized Europe for centuries. However, its origins are obscure. The Beginnings of the Ottoman Empire illuminates the founding of the Empire, drawing on Turkish, Greek, Arabic, and Latin sources as well as coins, buildings, and topographic evidence. Clive Foss takes the reader through the rugged homeland of Osman, the founder of the Ottomans, placing his achievement in the context of his more powerful neighbours, most notably the once mighty Byzantine Empire, then in the terminal stages of its decline. Foss then charts the progress of Osman's son Orhan, until the fateful moment in 1354 when his forces crossed into Europe and began their spectacular conquests.

Greek Nationalism and European Revolution

Nationalism has long been a besetting problem within Eastern Christianity and attracts regular critical attention today, but it has roots that go back to the aftermath of the French Revolution and the revolutionary period in Europe from the late 18th to early 20th centuries. This is perhaps most clearly seen in Greece, about which we have a new book:The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe Hardcover by Mark Mazower  (Penguin, November 2021), 608pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

From one of our leading historians, an important new history of the Greek War of Independence—the ultimate worldwide liberal cause célèbre of the age of Byron, Europe’s first nationalist uprising, and the beginning of the downward spiral of the Ottoman Empire—published two hundred years after its outbreak

As Mark Mazower shows us in his enthralling and definitive new account, myths about the Greek War of Independence outpaced the facts from the very beginning, and for good reason. This was an unlikely cause, against long odds, a disorganized collection of Greek patriots up against what was still one of the most storied empires in the world, the Ottomans. The revolutionaries needed all the help they could get. And they got it as Europeans and Americans embraced the idea that the heirs to ancient Greece, the wellspring of Western civilization, were fighting for their freedom against the proverbial Eastern despot, the Turkish sultan. This was Christianity versus Islam, now given urgency by new ideas about the nation-state and democracy that were shaking up the old order. Lord Byron is only the most famous of the combatants who went to Greece to fight and die—along with many more who followed events passionately and supported the cause through art, music, and humanitarian aid. To many who did go, it was a rude awakening to find that the Greeks were a far cry from their illustrious forebears, and were often hard to tell apart from the Ottomans.

Mazower does full justice to the realities on the ground as a revolutionary conspiracy triggered outright rebellion, and a fraying and distracted Ottoman leadership first missed the plot and then overreacted disastrously. He shows how and why ethnic cleansing commenced almost immediately on both sides. By the time the dust settled, Greece was free, and Europe was changed forever. It was a victory for a completely new kind of politics—international in its range and affiliations, popular in its origins, romantic in sentiment, and radical in its goals. It was here on the very edge of Europe that the first successful revolution took place in which a people claimed liberty for themselves and overthrew an entire empire to attain it, transforming diplomatic norms and the direction of European politics forever, and inaugurating a new world of nation-states, the world in which we still live.

Religion in Turkey Today

The role of Islam in Turkey has been changing since the turn of this century, after having changed a lot at the turn of the previous century, especially in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. A recent book helps us understand these recent changes: Kim Shivley, Islam in Modern Turkey (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), 256pp.

This book, the publisher tells us,

• Investigates the social and political forces that have shaped Islamic practices in Turkey, from 1923 to now
• Covers a different topic in each chapter: the Kemalist revolution, Sunni Islam, the Alevi minority, Sufi communities, political parties, religious education, and the contemporary period
• Explores issues that have shaped public debates about the role of religion in the Turkish secular state in case studies on, for example, veiling; the use of Atatürk imagery, and the liberalisation of the media
• Looks at the important – if contested – role of women and gender in religious practice in modern Turkey
• Draws on ethnographic detail based on the author’s research in Turkey over the last 28 years
• Provides the historical context for the rise of the controversial Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party
• Includes a note on Turkish usage and a glossary of key terms

Additionally the publisher reports this: 

This book provides a survey of Islam in Turkey since the founding of the modern republic in 1923. It examines the secularising policies of Turkey’s founders and how these policies have shaped the development of religious institutions and social expectations around religious practice up to the present day. A special emphasis is on the relationship between religion and politics, with chapters focusing on state-based religious institutions, religious education, Sufi orders and religious communities, Alevism, Islamic-oriented political parties, and the effects of economic liberalization on the practice of Islam in Turkey.

Readers will also learn about the political and social developments that contributed to the rise of the current Islamist government of the Justice and Development Party. In this way, Islam in Turkey provides vital historical context for understanding both the rise of the controversial President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and current events in Turkey and the Middle East more broadly.

The Western Armenian Diaspora

My two books in ecclesiology both gave pride of place to the Armenian Church, so I always keep an eye out for new scholarship on Armenia and Armenian Christianity. In March of this year we shall have published The Rise of the Western Armenian Diaspora in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire: From Refugee Crisis to Renaissance by Henry R. Shapiro (Edinburgh University Press, March 2022), 336pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This book traces how Armenian migrants changed the demographic and cultural landscape of Istanbul and Western Anatolia in the course of the seventeenth century. During the centuries that followed, Ottoman Armenian merchants, financiers (sarrafs), authors, musicians, translators, printers and bureaucrats would play key roles in Ottoman trade, cultural life and even governance, that is, in most spheres of the empire's economic and cultural life. This book shows how that cosmopolitan world came into being.

Using both Ottoman Turkish and little-known Armenian sources, Henry Shapiro provides the first systematic study of Armenian population movements that resulted in the cosmopolitan remaking of Istanbul. In the first part of the book he documents the Great Armenian Flight, showing how the global crisis of the seventeenth century (war, climate change, famine) impacted the historical Armenian population centres of the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia and led to mass migrations and resettlement in Western Anatolia, Istanbul and Thrace. In the second part of the book Shapiro links this history of migration and the refugee crisis with the development of intellectual and cultural life in Istanbul and Western Anatolia – the rise of the Western Armenian Diaspora.

On the Patriarchate of Constantinople

The office of the Roman papacy, of course, attracts huge attention, including from scholars. But the patriarchate of New Rome attracts considerably less attention. A new book, however, will help remind us of its venerable nature and complex history: A Companion to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, eds. Christian Gastgeber, Ekaterini Mitsiou, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, and Vratislav Zervan (Brill, 2021), 322pp.

Part of the series Brill's Companions to the Byzantine World, Volume: 9, this book, the publisher tells us,

provides an overview of the development of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from Late Antiquity to the Early Ottoman period (4th to 15th c.). It highlights continuities and changes in the organizational, dogmatic, and intellectual framework of the central ecclesiastical institution of the Byzantine Empire in the face of political and religious upheavals. The volume pays attention to the relations of the Patriarchate with other churches in the West and in the East. Across the disciplinary divide between Byzantine and Ottoman studies, the volume explains the longevity of the Patriarchate beyond the fall of Byzantium in 1453 up to modern times. A particular focus is laid on an original register book of the 14th century. 

You will note on the list of contributors some of the leading scholars of Byzantium today: 

Contributors are: Claudia Rapp, Frederick Lauritzen, Tia M. Kolbaba, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Marie-Hélène Blanchet, Dimitrios G. Apostolopoulos, Machi Païzi-Apostolopoulou, Klaus-Peter Todt, Mihailo S. Popović, Konstantinos Vetochnikov, Ekaterini Mitsiou, Vratislav Zervan, and Christian Gastgeber.

The Ottoman Empire at Sunset and its Last Wars in Europe

I hope there are archives in heaven, and books too, for I do not think I will ever have the time in my remaining years on Earth to acquire the languages necessary to immerse myself in all the works both published on, and still hidden away in the archives of, the Ottoman Empire. In the meantime, I will have to content myself with benefiting from the work of living scholars, including this new book which sounds very fascinating indeed:The Last Muslim Conquest: The Ottoman Empire and Its Wars in Europe by Gábor Ágoston  (Princeton University Press, 2021), 688pp. 

This book is, the publisher tells us, 

A monumental work of history that reveals the Ottoman dynasty's important role in the emergence of early modern Europe

The Ottomans have long been viewed as despots who conquered through sheer military might, and whose dynasty was peripheral to those of Europe. The Last Muslim Conquest transforms our understanding of the Ottoman Empire, showing how Ottoman statecraft was far more pragmatic and sophisticated than previously acknowledged, and how the Ottoman dynasty was a crucial player in the power struggles of early modern Europe.

In this panoramic and multifaceted book, Gábor Ágoston captures the grand sweep of Ottoman history, from the dynasty's stunning rise to power at the turn of the fourteenth century to the Siege of Vienna in 1683, which brought an end to Ottoman incursions into central Europe. He discusses how the Ottoman wars of conquest gave rise to the imperial rivalry with the Habsburgs, and brings vividly to life the intrigues of sultans, kings, popes, and spies. Ágoston examines the subtler methods of Ottoman conquest, such as dynastic marriages and the incorporation of conquered peoples into the Ottoman administration, and argues that while the Ottoman Empire was shaped by Turkish, Iranian, and Islamic influences, it was also an integral part of Europe and was, in many ways, a European empire.

Rich in narrative detail, The Last Muslim Conquest looks at Ottoman military capabilities, frontier management, law, diplomacy, and intelligence, offering new perspectives on the gradual shift in power between the Ottomans and their European rivals and reframing the old story of Ottoman decline.

Muslims and Greek Nationalism

I shall greatly look forward to reading this forthcoming book in September upon its release for it sounds like just the sort of work I take perhaps inordinate delight in. It confounds the fabulists who retail fantastical fiction about a past that never was in service of some dreary agenda in the present. This book reminds us once again that history is almost always written with nothing but crooked lines: it is, as I ceaselessly tell my students, messy, and a failure to appreciate that almost always dooms one to buffoonery instead of intelligent commentary and judicious analysis. 

In any event, forthcoming is Islam and Nationalism in Modern Greece, 1821-1940 by Stefanos Katsikas (Oxford UP, Sept. 2021), 321pp. About this book the publisher tells us this: 

Drawing from a wide range of archival and secondary Greek, Bulgarian, Ottoman, and Turkish sources, Islam and Nationalism in Modern Greece, 1821-1940 explores the way in which the Muslim populations of Greece were ruled by state authorities from the time of Greece's political emancipation from the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s until the country's entrance into the Second World War, in October 1940. The book examines how state rule influenced the development of the Muslim population's collective identity as a minority and affected Muslim relations with the Greek authorities and Orthodox Christians.

Greece was the first country in the Balkans to become an independent state and a pioneer in experimenting with minority issues. Greece's ruling framework and many state administrative measures and patterns would serve as templates in other Christian Orthodox Balkan states with Muslim minorities (Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Cyprus). Muslim religious officials were empowered with authority which they did not have in Ottoman times, and aspects of the Islamic law (Sharia) were incorporated into the state legal system to be used for Muslim family and property affairs. Religion remained a defining element in the political, social, and cultural life of the post-Ottoman Balkans; Stefanos Katsikas explores the role religious nationalism and public institutions have played in the development and preservation of religious and ethnic identity. Religion remains a key element of individual and collective identity but only as long as there are strong institutions and the political framework to support and maintain religious diversity.

Jewish and Palestinian Conflict in the Sunset of the Ottoman Empire

Knowing almost nothing about the latest Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I will say nothing beyond noting, as I have in the past on here, that such conflicts did not just arise in 2021 because of local circumstances, but have long and often complicated roots. A new book reminds us of this: Jews and Palestinians in the Late Ottoman Era, 1908-1914: Claiming the Homeland by Louis Fishman (Edinburgh University Press, 2021, 234pp.). 

About this book the publisher tells us this: 

Uncovering a history buried by different nationalist narratives (Jewish, Israeli, Arab and Palestinian) this book looks at how the late Ottoman era set the stage for the on-going Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It presents an innovative analysis of the struggle in its first years, when Palestine was still an integral part of the Ottoman Empire. And it argues that in the late Ottoman era, Jews and Palestinians were already locked in conflict: the new freedoms introduced by the Young Turk Constitutional Revolution exacerbated divisions (rather than serving as a unifying factor). Offering an integrative approach, it considers both communities, together and separately, in order to provide a more sophisticated narrative of how the conflict unfolded in its first years.

Christians under the Crescent and Muslims under the Cross c.630 - 1923

I previously posted a brief notice about this book, Christians under the Crescent and Muslims under the Cross c.630 - 1923 by Luigi Berto (Routledge, 2020), 178pp. I have now had a chance to read it, and as soon as I did made the decision on the spot to adopt it for my course Eastern Christian Encounters with Islam. It is the rare book that does all the things I need a book to do for teaching undergraduates, but this book superbly accomplishes them all:

• it is written in cogent, clear English
• it is without an obvious agenda, especially an apologetic one
• it is relatively brief
• it avoids getting lost in the notes and apparatus, which undergrads often find bewildering
• it captures the messiness of history--the "nobody has clean hands" approach
• it is reasonably affordable in a paperback edition.

My course has struggled over the years to find suitable texts. Some are far too apologetic and almost polemical; some are only partially useful; some were useful for a time but more recent scholarship or events on the ground (e.g., the Arab Spring) made much of them out of date. So to find this book is a great gift and I am very much looking forward to teaching with it.

The publisher's description of the book follows:

This book examines the status that rulers of one faith conferred onto their subjects belonging to a different one, how the rulers handled relationships with them, and the interactions between subjects of the Muslim and Christian religions.

The chronological arc of this volume spans from the first conquests by the Arabs in the Near East in the 630s to the exchange between Turkey and Greece, in 1923, of the Orthodox Christians and Muslims residing in their territories. Through organized topics, Berto analyzes both similarities and differences in Christian and Muslim lands and emphasizes how coexistences and conflicts took directions that were not always inevitable. Primary sources are used to examine the mentality of those who composed them and of their audiences. In doing so, the book considers the nuances and all the features of the multifaceted experiences of Christian subjects under Muslim rule and of Muslim subjects under Christian rule.

Christians under the Crescent and Muslims under the Cross is the ideal resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in the relationships between Christians and Muslims, religious minorities, and the Near East and the Mediterranean from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century.

Armenians in the Ottoman Empire

When trying to dissuade some of my more gung-ho American students from their romanticized assumptions that political movements for reform always end with what they want, and never in failure or in making things worse, the plight of Ottoman Armenians in the nineteenth century is near to hand offering severe lessons in paradoxical reactions. Those reactions and other developments are on display in a new book: Brokers of Faith, Brokers of Empire: Armenians and the Politics of Reform in the Ottoman Empire by Richard E. Antaramian (Stanford UP, 2020), 224pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The Ottoman Empire enforced imperial rule through its management of diversity. For centuries, non-Muslim religious institutions, such as the Armenian Church, were charged with guaranteeing their flocks' loyalty to the sultan. Rather than being passive subjects, Armenian elites, both the clergy and laity, strategically wove the institutions of the Armenian Church, and thus the Armenian community itself, into the fabric of imperial society. In so doing, Armenian elites became powerful brokers between factions in Ottoman politics―until the politics of nineteenth-century reform changed these relationships.

In Brokers of Faith, Brokers of Empire, Richard E. Antaramian presents a revisionist account of Ottoman reform, relating the contention within the Armenian community to broader imperial politics. Reform afforded Armenians the opportunity to recast themselves as partners of the state, rather than as brokers among factions. And in the course of pursuing such programs, they transformed the community's role in imperial society. As the Ottoman reform program changed how religious difference could be employed in a Muslim empire, Armenian clergymen found themselves enmeshed in high-stakes political and social contests that would have deadly consequences.

Catching up with the Armenians

If you read my first book on the papacy, or my book last year on the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, then you will know (with more detail than you could possibly want!) just how deep my admiration and love for the Armenian Church is. I focus primarily on their utterly unique ecclesial structures, but there is so much to admire in their forbearance in the face of a singular history of suffering and genocide, in their liturgical and theological traditions and, perhaps mundanely, in their hospitality and food which I have been very graced to receive on several occasions.

2020 is promising to be a banner year for further scholarly studies about the Armenian Church. We started off in January with Monastic Life in the Armenian Church: Glorious Past - Ecumenical Reconsideration edited by Jasmine Dum-Tragut and Dietmar W. Winkler (Lit Verlag, 2020), 224pp.

About this book the publisher tells us the following:

Monasticism is a vital feature of Christian spiritual life and has its origins in the Oriens Christianus. The present volume contains studies on Armenian Monasticism from various perspectives. The task is not only to produce historical studies. The aim is also to contribute to and reflect on monasticism today. Authors come from the Armenian Apostolic Catholicosate of Ejmiacin, the Holy See of Cilicia, the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and the  Armenian-Catholic Church, as well as from the Benedictine and  Franciscan Orders of the Catholic Church. The experts reflected on the glorious past of Armenian monasticism and agreed to evaluate future challenges ecumenically to give more insight into both past and present Armenian monasticism.

In early June, Stanford University Press is bringing out Brokers of Faith, Brokers of Empire: Armenians and the Politics of Reform in the Ottoman Empire by Richard E. Antaramian (SUP, 2020), 224pp.

About this book the publisher offers us this précis:

The Ottoman Empire enforced imperial rule through its management of diversity. For centuries, non-Muslim religious institutions, such as the Armenian Church, were charged with guaranteeing their flocks' loyalty to the sultan. Rather than being passive subjects, Armenian elites, both the clergy and laity, strategically wove the institutions of the Armenian Church, and thus the Armenian community itself, into the fabric of imperial society. In so doing, Armenian elites became powerful brokers between factions in Ottoman politics—until the politics of nineteenth-century reform changed these relationships. In Brokers of Faith, Brokers of Empire, Richard E. Antaramian presents a revisionist account of Ottoman reform, relating the contention within the Armenian community to broader imperial politics. Reform afforded Armenians the opportunity to recast themselves as partners of the state, rather than as brokers among factions. And in the course of pursuing such programs, they transformed the community's role in imperial society. As the Ottoman reform program changed how religious difference could be employed in a Muslim empire, Armenian clergymen found themselves enmeshed in high-stakes political and social contests that would have deadly consequences.

Finally in mid-July we will have the publication of Russia's Entangled Embrace: The Tsarist Empire and the Armenians, 1801-1914 by Stephen Badalyan Riegg (Cornell University Press, 2020), 328pp.

About this book the publisher provides this blurb:

Russia's Entangled Embrace traces the relationship between the Romanov state and the Armenian diaspora that populated Russia's territorial fringes and navigated the tsarist empire's metropolitan centers.

By engaging the ongoing debates about imperial structures that were simultaneously symbiotic and hierarchically ordered, Stephen Badalyan Riegg helps us to understand how, for Armenians and some other subjects, imperial rule represented not hypothetical, clear-cut alternatives but simultaneous, messy realities. He examines why, and how, Russian architects of empire imagined Armenians as being politically desirable. These circumstances included the familiarity of their faith, perceived degree of social, political, or cultural integration, and their actual or potential contributions to the state's varied priorities.

Based on extensive research in the archives of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Yerevan, Russia's Entangled Embrace reveals that the Russian government relied on Armenians to build its empire in the Caucasus and beyond. Analyzing the complexities of this imperial relationship―beyond the reductive question of whether Russia was a friend or foe to Armenians―allows us to study the methods of tsarist imperialism in the context of diasporic distribution, interimperial conflict and alliance, nationalism, and religious and economic identity.

Turkey's 30-Year-Long Genocide of Christians

With the tender ministrations of Turkey in other countries and against other ethnic groups again in global headlines, this book, released just this year, could hardly be more timely as a reminder of very recent atrocities against Easter Christians: The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924 by Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi (Harvard University Press, 2019), 672pp.

This book, the publisher tells us, is

A reappraisal of the giant massacres perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, and then the Turkish Republic, against their Christian minorities.

Between 1894 and 1924, three waves of violence swept across Anatolia, targeting the region’s Christian minorities, who had previously accounted for 20 percent of the population. By 1924, the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks had been reduced to 2 percent. Most historians have treated these waves as distinct, isolated events, and successive Turkish governments presented them as an unfortunate sequence of accidents. The Thirty-Year Genocide is the first account to show that the three were actually part of a single, continuing, and intentional effort to wipe out Anatolia’s Christian population.

The years in question, the most violent in the recent history of the region, began during the reign of the Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II, continued under the Young Turks, and ended during the first years of the Turkish Republic founded by Ataturk. Yet despite the dramatic swing from the Islamizing autocracy of the sultan to the secularizing republicanism of the post–World War I period, the nation’s annihilationist policies were remarkably constant, with continual recourse to premeditated mass killing, homicidal deportation, forced conversion, mass rape, and brutal abduction. And one thing more was a constant: the rallying cry of jihad. While not justified under the teachings of Islam, the killing of two million Christians was effected through the calculated exhortation of the Turks to create a pure Muslim nation.

Revelatory and impeccably researched, Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi’s account is certain to transform how we see one of modern history’s most horrific events.

Obsessive-Compulsive Ottoman Disorder

Well do I recall reading biographies of David Lloyd George, as well as histories of the Great War and its aftermath, and hearing again how much George loathed the Ottomans and how, if nothing else came of the conflict, he wanted to ensure their empire was smashed after the war. Even sympathetic commentators and biographers regarded this as an "obsession" on George's part, but it was apparently an obsession shared by many others, as we shall soon see. Set for release early next month is what looks to be a fascinating work exploring how we construct images of "enemies" and how we view and write history in the light of current politics: Noel Malcolm, Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2019), 512pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

From the fall of Constantinople in 1453 until the eighteenth century, many Western European writers viewed the Ottoman Empire with almost obsessive interest. Typically they reacted to it with fear and distrust; and such feelings were reinforced by the deep hostility of Western Christendom towards Islam. Yet there was also much curiosity about the social and political system on which the huge power of the sultans was based. In the sixteenth century, especially, when Ottoman territorial expansion was rapid and Ottoman institutions seemed particularly robust, there was even open admiration.

In this path-breaking book Noel Malcolm ranges through these vital centuries of East-West interaction, studying all the ways in which thinkers in the West interpreted the Ottoman Empire as a political phenomenon - and Islam as a political religion. Useful Enemies shows how the concept of 'oriental despotism' began as an attempt to turn the tables on a very positive analysis of Ottoman state power, and how, as it developed, it interacted with Western debates about monarchy and government. Noel Malcolm also shows how a negative portrayal of Islam as a religion devised for political purposes was assimilated by radical writers, who extended the criticism to all religions, including Christianity itself.

Examining the works of many famous thinkers (including Machiavelli, Bodin, and Montesquieu) and many less well-known ones, Useful Enemies illuminates the long-term development of Western ideas about the Ottomans, and about Islam. Noel Malcolm shows how these ideas became intertwined with internal Western debates about power, religion, society, and war. Discussions of Islam and the Ottoman Empire were thus bound up with mainstream thinking in the West on a wide range of important topics. These Eastern enemies were not just there to be denounced. They were there to be made use of, in arguments which contributed significantly to the development of Western political thought.

On the Greek Genocide of 1915

In 2015 I gave several lectures on the centenary of the genocidal massacres of Eastern Christians at Ottoman hands. The best-known of these is of course the Armenian Genocide, about which a considerable number of books has emerged over the last quarter-century. But during my lecture I noted that two other captive Eastern Christian populations--Greeks and Assyrians--were also slaughtered in huge numbers. The Assyrian massacres have started very recently to receive some attention, as I noted here. But details about the Greek slaughter have largely been confined to a tiny handful of scholarly articles or passing reference in the occasional book--until now.

Set for November release is The Making of the Greek Genocide: Contested Memories of the Ottoman Greek Catastrophe by Erik Sjöberg (Berghahn Books, 2018), 266pp.

About this book we are told this by the publisher:

During and after World War I, over one million Ottoman Greeks were expelled from Turkey, a watershed moment in Greek history that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. And while few dispute the expulsion's tragic scope, it remains the subject of fierce controversy, as activists have fought for international recognition of an atrocity they consider comparable to the Armenian genocide. This book provides a much-needed analysis of the Greek genocide as cultural trauma. Neither taking the genocide narrative for granted nor dismissing it outright, Erik Sjöberg instead recounts how it emerged as a meaningful but contested collective memory with both nationalist and cosmopolitan dimensions.

The End of the Endless Great War

Almost five years ago now, I noted that we were gearing up for the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, which was already in 2013 occasioning a steady publication of new books, which only accelerated in the following year. For general histories, see the link at the top. For a specifically theological analysis of the war, I noted here Philip Jenkins' surprising, almost shocking, book on the war as a holy war.

And now, as this interesting photo array at The Atlantic reminds me, we are coming upon the centenary of the end of the war. 

The war may have ended nearly a century ago now, but as the always-fascinating Cambridge historian David Reynolds has shown, that war has had very long shadows. Eastern Christians are aware of that only too well, living in the aftermath of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and its genocides against Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Christians.

As we come to the centenary of the end of the war, and then to the abysmal legacy of the peace conference afterwards, I draw your attention once more to a splendid book by the Anglo-Canadian historian (and great grand-daughter of David Lloyd George) Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World. 

This book tells a complicated story with great insight and panache. She allows the major characters--especially Clemenceau, George, and Wilson--to come alive alongside an equally fascinating set of other leaders in Paris--e.g., the Greek prime minister Venizelos, various minor Romanian royals, and others. And the sarcastic comments made by Clemenceau against George and Wilson are revealing and hilarious in about equal measure--and far from undeserved. It is a fascinating history sure to delight.

On the Assyrian Genocide of 1915

2017 has been a banner year for publications on some of the lesser known genocides of the last century. (We saw one significant publication in 2016, as I noted here.) The events of 1915 have very largely focused on the largest mass slaughter, that of the Armenians; but the genocides of Assyrian Christians and of Greek Orthodox Christians, in the same part of eastern Anatolia in the same year and for the same reasons as the Armenian genocide, have been rather obscured until now.

When I gave a lecture two years ago on the centenary of the Armenian Genocide, I drew attention to the Assyrian and Greek slaughters as well, drawing on several scholarly articles published by Hannibal Travis, editor of a new collection, The Assyrian Genocide: Cultural and Political Legacies 
(Routledge, 2017), 340pp.

About this collection the publisher tells us:

For a brief period, the attention of the international community has focused once again on the plight of religious minorities in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. In particular, the abductions and massacres of Yezidis and Assyrians in the Sinjar, Mosul, Nineveh Plains, Baghdad, and Hasakah regions in 2007–2015 raised questions about the prevention of genocide. This book, while principally analyzing the Assyrian genocide of 1914–1925 and its implications for the culture and politics of the region, also raises broader questions concerning the future of religious diversity in the Middle East. It gathers and analyzes the findings of a broad spectrum of historical and scholarly works on Christian identities in the Middle East, genocide studies, international law, and the politics of the late Ottoman Empire, as well as the politics of the Ottomans' British and Russian rivals for power in western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean basin.

A key question the book raises is whether the fate of the Assyrians maps onto any of the concepts used within international law and diplomatic history to study genocide and group violence. In this light, the Assyrian genocide stands out as being several times larger, in both absolute terms and relative to the size of the affected group, than the Srebrenica genocide, which is recognized by Turkey as well as by international tribunals and organizations. Including its Armenian and Greek victims, the Ottoman Christian Genocide rivals the Rwandan, Bengali, and Biafran genocides. The book also aims to explore the impact of the genocide period of 1914–1925 on the development or partial unraveling of Assyrian group cohesion, including aspirations to autonomy in the Assyrian areas of northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, and southeastern Turkey. Scholars from around the world have collaborated to approach these research questions by reference to diplomatic and political archives, international legal materials, memoirs, and literary works.

Two other collections continue to deepen our knowledge of this genocide: Let Them Not Return: The Genocide Against the Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire, edited by David Gaunt,‎ Naures Atto, and‎ Soner O. Barthoma (Berghahn Books, 2017), 274pp.

About this collection we are told:

The mass killing of Ottoman Armenians is today widely recognized, both within and outside scholarly circles, as an act of genocide. What is less well known, however, is that it took place within a broader context of Ottoman violence against minority groups during and after the First World War. Among those populations decimated were the indigenous Christian Assyrians (also known as Syriacs or Chaldeans) who lived in the borderlands of present-day Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. This volume is the first scholarly edited collection focused on the Assyrian genocide, or "Sayfo" (literally, "sword" in Aramaic), presenting historical, psychological, anthropological, and political perspectives that shed much-needed light on a neglected historical atrocity.

Third and finally is this collection: Readings in the 20th Century Genocide of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch (SAYFO) by Boutros Touma Issa et al (Nova Science Publishers, 2017), 210pp.

This book, authored by family members who were originated in Mesopotamia, and are members of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, strives to provide a brief historical background on the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, her dogma, her ancient sacred language (Syriac/Aramaic), and persecution including 1915 Genocide (Sayfo) which might also be referred to as (SAYFO/SEPA/SWORD ܣܝܦܐ).

This book endeavours to bring to light a historical account of the inhabitants of the ancient land of Mesopotamia, leading to the events that resulted in several persecutions of these original people of the land, specifically during the “Syriac Genocide” (Sayfo) of 1915 (SAYFO/SEPA/SWORD ܣܝܦܐ). The authors derive from diverse sources, including some ancient rare manuscripts that have not been, to date, translated into English from Syriac/Aramaic; supported by evidence derived from some of what has been translated into English, including personal accounts. In this book, the authors highlight the number of people who were massacred and those who were forced to leave their Christian faith and convert, including members of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, showing the unpleasant face of persecution and Genocide against people who are accredited of their huge positive impact on the World’s Civilization.

This book commences with a brief historical background on the origin of Christianity in the East, and the historical background of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, leading to an explanation of the atrocities at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, providing a backdrop to allow an understanding of the context at the time, concluding with some insights of the atrocities in the 21st century against the same people in parts of the Middle East and around the world. The book provides a brief account of the courageous actions taken by patriarchs, other clergy, and lay people to face such atrocities. The authors briefly examine some of the events that took place leading to the main Genocide of 1915, the “Syriac Genocide” (Sayfo) (SAYFO/SEPA/SWORD ܣܝܦܐ), or what has been dubbed as “The Forgotten Genocide”. The book concludes with some events that took place in the 21st century which were mainly derived from the ongoing incidents that affected the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch and her community in the Middle East and around the world.

Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the Twilight of the Ottoman Empire

It is a longstanding frustration of mine that suitable textbooks for my undergrads are hard to come by when studying the history of relations between Muslims and Eastern Christians. Thus I take a special interest in a new book by Heather Sharkey, published this spring, which I'm looking forward to reading: A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East (Cambridge UP, 2017), 394pp.

About this book we are told:

Across centuries, the Islamic Middle East hosted large populations of Christians and Jews in addition to Muslims. Today, this diversity is mostly absent. In this book, Heather J. Sharkey examines the history that Muslims, Christians, and Jews once shared against the shifting backdrop of state policies. Focusing on the Ottoman Middle East before World War I, Sharkey offers a vivid and lively analysis of everyday social contacts, dress, music, food, bathing, and more, as they brought people together or pushed them apart. Historically, Islamic traditions of statecraft and law, which the Ottoman Empire maintained and adapted, treated Christians and Jews as protected subordinates to Muslims while prescribing limits to social mixing. Sharkey shows how, amid the pivotal changes of the modern era, efforts to simultaneously preserve and dismantle these hierarchies heightened tensions along religious lines and set the stage for the twentieth-century Middle East.

Syrian Orthodox Christians in the Late Ottoman Period

Several times in the past I have on here sung the praises of Gorgias Press in their wide-ranging treatment of many aspects of Eastern Christian history, tradition, and theology, including most especially the interactions between various Eastern Christian and Islamic groups. In their newest catalogue, sent to me just yesterday, we see at long last a study that has been promised for some time newly released: Khalid S. Dinno, Syrian Orthodox Christians in the Late Ottoman Period and Beyond: Crisis Then Revival (Gorgias Press, 2017), 526pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Despite the protection afforded to the minorities of the Ottoman Empire through the millet system, Syrian Orthodoxy witnessed weakness and depletion throughout the nineteenth century, caused by significant conversion to Western Christianity, particularly in Syria and in Iraq.

The events following the 1895 violence in southeastern Anatolia became precursors to the genocidal Safyo of 1915, which resulted in the annihilation of nearly half the Syrian Orthodox in Anatolia and brought Syrian Orthodoxy to the verge of extinction. The apathy of the victors of World War I towards the beleaguered survivors contrasted with the welcome the exiled survivors found in the Arab lands to the south, where historical affinity was rekindled.

From the safety of this new environment, Syrian Orthodoxy, led by enlightened individuals, was revitalized, drawing on a venerable Syriac cultural tradition and a patriarchal standing that was characteristically free from social elitism and tribal sectarianism. Utilizing the quest for learning that was widespread in the emerging new nation states, this new leadership, despite meager resources, launched Syrian Orthodoxy on a course of revival and renaissance not witnessed since the days of Bar Hebraeus in the late thirteenth century.

No study, in any language, has covered the history of the Syrian Orthodox Church over the designated period as fully as this current work, which it is hoped will fill a dire gap and break ground in new research. The basis for this study, in addition to published sources, has been approximately 6,000 relevant images that were filtered from a collection of over 24,000 uncatalogued, unedited and unpublished archival documents that were made available to the author.

Ottoman Imperial Identities

I have previously commented on several recent histories of the Ottoman Empire in monograph form. Now we have a paperback version of a collection of articles looking at many and varied aspects of Ottoman imperial history: Living in the Ottoman Realm: Empire and Identity, 13th to 20th Centuries, eds. Christine Isom-Verhaaren and Kent F. Schull (Indiana University Press, 2016), 384pp.

About this collection we are told:

Living in the Ottoman Realm brings the Ottoman Empire to life in all of its ethnic, religious, linguistic, and geographic diversity. The contributors explore the development and transformation of identity over the long span of the empire’s existence. They offer engaging accounts of individuals, groups, and communities by drawing on a rich array of primary sources, some available in English translation for the first time. These materials are examined with new methodological approaches to gain a deeper understanding of what it meant to be Ottoman. Designed for use as a course text, each chapter includes study questions and suggestions for further reading.

We are also given the table of contents:

Introduction: Dealing with Identity in the Ottoman Empire / Christine Isom-Verhaaren and Kent F. Schull

Part I. 13th-15th Centuries. Emergence and Expansion: From Frontier Beylik to Cosmopolitan Empire
1. The Giving Divide: Food Gifts and Social Identity in Late Medieval Anatolia /Nicolas Trépanier
2. Changing Perceptions along the Frontiers: The Moving Frontier with Rum in the Late Medieval Anatolian Frontier Narratives / Zeynep Aydoğan
3. The Genoese of Pera in the Fifteenth Century: The Case of the Draperio and Spinola Families / F. Ozden Mercan
4. From Byzantine Aristocracy to Ottoman Ruling Elite: Mahmud Pasha Angelović and his Christian Circle, 1458-1474 / Theoharis Stavrides
5. Neşri’s Cihannüma, an Early Ottoman History Book and the Politics of Ottoman Identity / Murat Cem Mengüç
6. A Shaykh, a Prince and a Sack of Corn: An Anatolian Sufi Becomes Ottoman / Hasan Karatas

Part II. 15-17th Centuries. Expansion and Cultural Splendor: The Creation of a Sunni Islamic Empire
7. Ibn-i Kemal’s Confessionalism and the Construction of an "Ottoman" Islam / Nabil al-Tikriti
8. Becoming Ottoman in Sixteenth-century Aintab / Leslie Peirce
9. Making Jerusalem Ottoman / Amy Singer
10. Ibrahim b. Khidr al-Qaramani: A Merchant and Urban Notable of Early Ottoman Aleppo / Charles Wilkins
11. Mihrimah Sultan: A Princess Constructs Ottoman Dynastic Identity / Christine Isom-Verhaaren

Part III. 17th-18th Centuries. Upheaval and Transformation: From Conquest to Administrative State
12. The Sultan’s Advisors and their Opinions on the Identity of the Real Ottoman Elite, 1580-1653 / Linda T. Darling
13. Fleeing "The Vomit of Infidelity": Borders, Conversion, and Muslim Women’s Agency in the Early Modern Mediterranean / Eric Dursteller
14. Policing Morality: Crossing Gender Communal Boundaries in an Age of Political Crisis and Religious Controversy in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul / Fariba Zarinebaf
15. Leaving France, "Turning Turk," Becoming Ottoman: The Transformation of Comte Claude-Alexandre de Bonneval into Humbaraci Ahmed Pasha / Julia Landweber
16. Out of Africa, into the Palace: The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch / Jane Hathaway
17. The Province Goes to the Center: The Case of Hadjiyorgakis Kornesios, Dragoman
of Cyprus / Antonis Hadjikyriacou

Part IV. 19th-20th Centuries. Modernity, Mass Politics, and Nationalism: From Empire to Nation-state
18. Ruler Visibility, Modernity, and Ethno-nationalism in the Late Ottoman Empire / Darin Stephanov
19. Muslims’ Contribution to Science and Ottoman Identity / M. Alper Yalçinkaya
20. Migrants, Revolutionaries, and Spies: Surveillance, Politics, and Ottoman Identity in the United States / David Gutman
21. Ottomanism among the Greek Orthodox at the End of Empire: The Multiple Loyalties of Pavlos Carolidis / Vangelis Kechriotis
22. Zionism in the Era of Ottoman Brotherhood / Michelle U. Campos

If a Sultan Falls in an Ottoman Forest, Does Anybody Hear It?

This summer, I discussed a recent and quite splendid study of the sunset of the Ottoman Empire in the context of and as a result of the First World War. That book, by Eugene Rogan, has already achieved a number of honours and accolades, and rightly so.

In a similar vein, another study by Ryan Gingeras, released in May, renews our focus on this period of imperial collapse and the loss of the sultanate. Published by Oxford University Press, and coming in at 288pp., this study, Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1922, looks fascinating indeed.

About it, the publisher tells us:

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire was by no means a singular event. After six hundred years of ruling over the peoples of North Africa, the Balkans and Middle East, the death throes of sultanate encompassed a series of wars, insurrections, and revolutions spanning the early twentieth century. This volume encompasses a full accounting of the political, economic, social, and international forces that brought about the passing of the Ottoman state. In surveying the many tragedies that transpired in the years between 1908 and 1922, Fall of the Sultanate explores the causes that eventually led so many to view the legacy of the Ottomans with loathing and resentment.

The volume provides a retelling of this critical history as seen through the eyes of those who lived through the Ottoman collapse. Drawing upon a large gamut of sources in multiple languages, Ryan Gingeras strikes a critical balance in presenting and interpreting the most impactful experiences that shaped the lives of the empire's last generation. The story presented here takes into account the perspectives of the empire's diverse population as well as the leaders who piloted the state to its end. In surveying the personal, communal, and national struggles that defined Italy's invasion of Libya, the Balkan War, the Great War, and the Turkish War of Independence, Fall of the Sultanate presents readers with a fresh and comprehensive exposition of how and why Ottoman imperial rule ended in bloodshed and disillusionment.