THE OTTOMANS: KHANS, CAESARS AND CALIPHS
A thrilling history of one of the world’s largest empires
Author Marc David Baer Publisher Basic Books Price £30 Released 14 October 2021
Empires can grow from the smallest of roots. The Ottoman dynasty began life as one of many nomad chieftaincies in Anatolia, in the shadow of the gargantuan Mongol Empire. Over the course of the early medieval era, it grew conquest by conquest until it ruled a territory of millions of people, stretching across Europe, Asia and Africa at its height. It produced sultans to match Europe’s powerful monarchs – from Mehmed
II, who conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453, to Suleiman ‘The Magnificent’, contemporary of Charles V, Francis I and Henry VIII, whose military actions took him as far within Europe as the gates of Vienna. These events were but a distant memory when the empire dissolved in the early 20th century, one of a number to fall in the event or aftermath of World War I.
Marc David Baer’s The Ottomans is an ambitious work of narrative history, charting the key moments of the dynasty’s lifespan in just over
500 pages. It argues that the Ottoman Empire is an integral part of European history, an entity which was shaped by, and in turn shaped, events on the continent. An empire which saw itself as the successor of the Romans, and actively participated in the warfare, diplomacy, cultural trends and trade of the day. Baer draws on an impressive range of historical approaches – gender, society, politics and military matters all have their place here. Brutal events and cultural achievements sit side-by-side. We read of power struggles between sultans’ heirs, discord and revolt within the Janissaries (the sultan’s military corps), but also of architectural marvels from mosques to pleasure gardens, and Renaissance-era art and patronage.
One of the most detailed themes is the empire’s treatment of its diverse population. Its people included Muslim, Greek Orthodox, Jewish, Armenian, Arab, Kurd and Italian communities.
The empire converted huge numbers of its new (conquered) citizens to Islam but for centuries it also practised religious tolerance. Among the communities to settle in Constantinople were Spanish Jews who had been expelled from Catholic Spain. Although, as Baer notes, tolerance is a power relationship in and of itself, with the dominant party determining the degree of tolerance permitted. We see this all too tragically in the accounts of massacres targeting Armenian communities in the 1890s, and the genocide of these same communities under the cover of World War I.
The book – which closes with the establishment of the secular Turkish Republic in 1922 – runs as a continuous narrative, with the exception of some sections which pause the account to discuss specific themes including the sultan’s harem, same-sex relationships in the empire and the Ottoman Age of Discovery. Readers may find this disrupts the flow of the overarching story – and indeed these themes do feature in varying degrees elsewhere in the book – but nevertheless these diversions provide welcome context.
The Ottomans is a convincing study that provides multifaceted insights into one of the largest empires the world has ever seen.
“A convincing study that provides multifaceted insights into one of the largest empires the world has seen”