The articles compiled in Ottoman War & Peace. Studies in Honor of Virginia H. Aksan, honor the prolific career of a foremost scholar of the Ottoman Empire, and engage in redefining the boundaries of Ottoman historiography. Blending micro and macro approaches, the volume covers topics from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries related to the Ottoman military and warfare, biography and intellectual history, and inter-imperial and cross-cultural relations. Through these themes, this volume seeks to bring out and examine the institutional and socio-political complexity of the Ottoman Empire and its peoples.
Contributors are Eleazar Birnbaum, Maurits van den Boogert, Palmira Brummett, Frank Castiglione, Linda Darling, Caroline Finkel, Molly Greene, Jane Hathaway, Colin Heywood, Douglas Howard, Christine Isom-Verhaaren, Dina Rizk Khoury, Ethan L. Menchinger, Victor Ostapchuk, Leslie Peirce, James A. Reilly, Will Smiley, Mark Stein, Kahraman Åakul, Veysel ÅimÅek, Feryal TansuÄ, Baki Tezcan, Fatih YeÅil, Aysel Yıldız.
Frank Castiglione, Ph.D. (2016), Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Ethan L. Menchinger, Ph.D. (2014), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is Lecturer in the History of the Islamic World at the University of Manchester. He has published numerous articles on the Ottoman Empire and is author of the monograph The First of the Modern Ottomans: the Intellectual History of Ahmed Vâsıf (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Veysel ÅimÅek, Ph.D. (2015), McMaster University, is lecturer in Turkish at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. Previously, he held post-doctoral fellowships at McGill and Yale. He has taught and published on the political, social, and military history of the Ottoman Empire.
âAcknowledgments âList of Illustrations âNotes on Contributors âPublications by Virginia H. Aksan âIntroduction
âFrank Castiglione, Ethan L. Menchinger and Veysel ÅimÅek
Part 1: Ottoman Military and Society
1 Crime among the Janissaries in the Ottoman Golden Age
âLinda T. Darling
2 The Trouble with TimÄrs: An Excursion into a Seventeenth-Century Documentary Landscape
âVictor Ostapchuk
3 Ottoman Observers of Ottoman War in the 17th Century
âMark Stein
4 The Azadlu Gunpowder Works: Catalyst for the Military Industry Complexes of Istanbul
âKahraman Åakul
5 Drill and Discipline as a Civilizing Process: The Genesis of the Modern Soldier in the Ottoman Empire, 1789â1826
âFatih YeÅil
6 Armatole Families in the 18th Century Balkans
âMolly Greene
7 Under Fire and Lice: Experiences of an Ottoman Soldier in the First World War and the Turkish War of Independence (1919â1922)
âVeyselÅimÅek
8 Shayzar, an Ottoman Fortress-Settlement in Syria
âJames A. Reilly
Part 2: Ideas, Political Thought, and the Circulation of Knowledge
9 A Cure for the Plague, and Other Prescriptions
âEleazar Birnbaum
10 A Phenomenology of Empire: Ayn Ali on the Ottoman Provinces
âDouglas A. Howard
11 Visualizing Ottoman Space: Choiseul-Gouffier and the Passage through Anatolia, 1776
âPalmira Brummett
12 On the Identity of a Reformist Intellectual: the Koca SekbanbaÅı Debate Revisited
âEthan L. Menchinger and Aysel Yıldız
Part 3: Biography
13 The Law School of Mehmed II in the Last Quarter of the Sixteenth Century: A Glass Ceiling of the less connected Ottoman Ulema
âBaki Tezcan
14 Writing Biography with Limited Sources and Fewer Models: The Case of Hurrem Sultan
âLeslie Peirce
15 Tracing the Life of Hüsam Bey: Career Paths in the Sixteenth-century Ottoman Navy
âChristine Isom-Verhaaren
16 Eunuchs and the State in the Mamlūk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire: A Comparison
âJane Hathaway
17 âThe clever Engineer Koehlerâ: The Clandestine Activities of George Frederick Koehler (1758â1800) in the Ottoman lands, 1791â93
âCaroline Finkel
Part 4: Ottoman Identity and Inter-confessional Relations
18 An Ottoman âExemption Letter (MuâÄf-nÄme)â Dated 1015/1606 for the Karaite Descendants of FÄtima HÄtÅ«n, kira of Hafsa Sultan, the Mother of SüleymÄn the Magnificent: a Document from the National Museum of Lithuania
âColin Heywood
19 Ottoman Brokers in the 18th-Century Levant Trade
âMaurits H. van den Boogert
20 The Battle of Ali Hoca Burnu: Framed Privateers, Questionable Loyalties, and a Sultanic Prize Court
âWill Smiley
21 Revisiting the Escalation of Intercommunal Violence in İzmir (1797): âAnti-Greek,â or a More Complex Dynamic?
âFeryal TansuÄ
22 Nationality and Sect in Ottoman and post-Ottoman Iraq
âDina Rizk Khoury
Index
Scholars and students interested in the history of the Ottoman Empire, and specifically military history, biography, intellectual history, and inter-confessional relations.