Reevaluates the established historical view of the Ottoman Empire as an eastern despotic nation-state in decline and instead analyzes it as a modern state comparable to contemporary states in Europe and Asia.

"Abou-El-Haj's study will stimulate general readers to rethink the Ottoman experience, to reexamine its main lines of development, to ponder the lessons of the Ottoman legacy for both the Middle East and Southeast Europe. Specialists will want to reexamine their own assumptions. . . . Perhaps the greatest contribution of this study is to challenge readers to think of the Ottoman experience as 'normal,' as subject to the same pressures and tensions which have faced people in other times and places."—Digest of Middle East Studies

Description

With extensive new material, this classic book reevaluates the established historical view of the Ottoman Empire as an eastern despotic nation-state in decline and instead analyzes it as a modern state comparable to contemporary states in Europe and Asia.

About the Author

Rifa'at 'Ali Abou-El-Haj is professor of modern Near East and European history at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is the author of The Rebellion of 1703 and the Structure of Ottoman Politics and coeditor, with I. Bierman and D. Preziosi, of Ottoman Power and Urban Structure.

Series: Middle East Studies Beyond Dominant Paradigms

6 x 9, 184 pages

November 2005