Cross and Crescent in the Balkans

Cross and Crescent in the Balkans PDF Author: David Nicolle
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This is not just another retelling of the Fall of Constantinople, though it does include a very fine account of that momentous event. It is the history of a quite extraordinary century and a bit which began when a tiny force of Ottoman Turkish warriors was invited by the Christian Byzantine Emperor to cross the Dardanelles from Asia into Europe to assist him in one of the civil wars which were tearing the fast-declining Byzantine Empire apart. One hundred and eight years later the Byzantine capital of Constantinople fell to what was by then a hugely powerful and expanding empire of the Islamic Ottoman Turks, whose rulers came to see themselves as the natural and legitimate heirs of their Byzantine and indeed Roman predecessors. The book sets the scene, explains the background and tells the story, both military, political, cultural and personal, of the winners and the losers, plus those 'outsiders' who were increasingly being drawn into the dramatic story of the rise of the Ottoman Empire. AUTHOR: David Nicolle is a leading expert on the history of medieval warfare, in particular the Crusades and Middle Eastern warfare, and he is a prolific writer of books on these subjects as well as articles and magazine articles. SELLING POINTS: -Explains how the Ottoman Turks conquered South East Europe -Sets the final fall of the 'Roman' Byzantine Empire in its full context -Undoubtedly one of the leading authors in this field ILLUSTRATIONS 33 b/w photographs

Cross and Crescent in the Balkans

Cross and Crescent in the Balkans PDF Author: David Nicolle
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is not just another retelling of the Fall of Constantinople, though it does include a very fine account of that momentous event. It is the history of a quite extraordinary century and a bit which began when a tiny force of Ottoman Turkish warriors was invited by the Christian Byzantine Emperor to cross the Dardanelles from Asia into Europe to assist him in one of the civil wars which were tearing the fast-declining Byzantine Empire apart. One hundred and eight years later the Byzantine capital of Constantinople fell to what was by then a hugely powerful and expanding empire of the Islamic Ottoman Turks, whose rulers came to see themselves as the natural and legitimate heirs of their Byzantine and indeed Roman predecessors. The book sets the scene, explains the background and tells the story, both military, political, cultural and personal, of the winners and the losers, plus those 'outsiders' who were increasingly being drawn into the dramatic story of the rise of the Ottoman Empire. AUTHOR: David Nicolle is a leading expert on the history of medieval warfare, in particular the Crusades and Middle Eastern warfare, and he is a prolific writer of books on these subjects as well as articles and magazine articles. SELLING POINTS: -Explains how the Ottoman Turks conquered South East Europe -Sets the final fall of the 'Roman' Byzantine Empire in its full context -Undoubtedly one of the leading authors in this field ILLUSTRATIONS 33 b/w photographs

The Ottoman Conquest of the Balkans

The Ottoman Conquest of the Balkans PDF Author: Oliver Jens Schmitt
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783700178903
Category : Balkan Peninsula
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Ottoman conquest of the Balkans constitutes a major change in European history. Scholarship on the topic is extensive, yet the evidence produced by decades of research is very scattered and lacking comprehensive synthesis, not to mention consensual interpretation. Although major political and military milestones seem to have been investigated thoroughly, there is a notable absence of more theoretical and interpretative approaches that overarch the entire phenomenon rather than merely individual aspects. Scholars have hitherto addressed the topic from various perspectives and employing a wide range of methods, but Byzantine studies, Ottoman studies, Eastern Mediterranean studies and national historiographies in the Balkan countries have yet to establish either a coherent collaboration or a consistent model of interpretation. This volume therefore rather aims at opening and structuring a new heuristic approach and at coordinating a field of studies that is of crucial importance for understanding change in European history.

The Nature of the Early Ottoman State

The Nature of the Early Ottoman State PDF Author: Heath W. Lowry
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791487261
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Drawing on surviving documents from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State provides a revisionist approach to the study of the formative years of the Ottoman Empire. Challenging the predominant view that a desire to spread Islam accounted for Ottoman success during the fourteenth-century advance into Southeastern Europe, Lowry argues that the primary motivation was a desire for booty and slaves. The early Ottomans were a plundering confederacy, open to anyone (Muslim or Christian) who could meaningfully contribute to this goal. It was this lack of a strict religious orthodoxy, and a willingness to preserve local customs and practices, that allowed the Ottomans to gain and maintain support. Later accounts were written to buttress what had become the self-image of the dynasty following its incorporation of the heartland of the Islamic world in the sixteenth century.

The Late Medieval Balkans

The Late Medieval Balkans PDF Author: John V. A. Fine (jr.)
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472082605
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 708

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Book Description
Covers the formation and histories of new states in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Bosnia, through their final subjugation by the Ottomans

Balkan Wars

Balkan Wars PDF Author: James D. Tracy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442213604
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
Distinguished scholar James D. Tracy shows how the Ottoman advance across Europe stalled in the western Balkans, where three great powers confronted one another in three adjoining provinces: Habsburg Croatia, Ottoman Bosnia, and Venetian Dalmatia. Until about 1580, Bosnia was a platform for Ottoman expansion, and Croatia steadily lost territory, while Venice focused on protecting the Dalmatian harbors vital for its trade with the Ottoman east. But as Habsburg-Austrian elites coalesced behind military reforms, they stabilized Croatia’s frontier, while Bosnia shifted its attention to trade, and Habsburg raiders crossing Dalmatia heightened tensions with Venice. The period ended with a long inconclusive war between Habsburgs and Ottomans, and a brief inconclusive war between Austria and Venice. Based on rich primary research and a masterful synthesis of key studies, this book is the first English-language history of the early modern Western Balkans. More broadly, it brings out how the Ottomans and their European rivals conducted their wars in fundamentally different ways. A sultan’s commands were not negotiable, and Ottoman generals were held to a time-tested strategy for conquest. Habsburg sovereigns had to bargain with their elites, and it took elaborate processes of consultation to rally provincial estates behind common goals. In the end, government-by-consensus was able to withstand government-by-command.

Islam in the Balkans

Islam in the Balkans PDF Author: H. T. Norris
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780872499775
Category : Balkan Peninsula
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
From the earliest times, also, many Balkan Muslim soldiers and bureaucrats, as well as scholars and poets, made an impact on the wider Islamic world, the most prominent being Mohammed Ali, the founder of modern Egypt.

Cumans and Tatars

Cumans and Tatars PDF Author: István Vásáry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139444085
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The Cumans and the Tatars were nomadic warriors of the Eurasian steppe who exerted an enduring impact on the medieval Balkans. With this work, István Vásáry presents an extensive examination of their history from 1185 to 1365. The basic instrument of Cuman and Tatar political success was their military force, over which none of the Balkan warring factions could claim victory. As a consequence, groups of the Cumans and the Tatars settled and mingled with the local population in various regions of the Balkans. The Cumans were the founders of three successive Bulgarian dynasties (Asenids, Terterids and Shishmanids) and the Wallachian dynasty (Basarabids). They also played an active role in Byzantium, Hungary and Serbia, with Cuman immigrants being integrated into each country's elite. This book also demonstrates how the prevailing political anarchy in the Balkans in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries made it ripe for the Ottoman conquest.

The Ottoman Wild West

The Ottoman Wild West PDF Author: Nikolay Antov
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107182638
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
An analysis of Balkan Islam and the formation of one of the largest Muslim communities in the early-modern Ottoman Balkans.

Reading Clocks, Alla Turca

Reading Clocks, Alla Turca PDF Author: Avner Wishnitzer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022625786X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Up until the end of the eighteenth century, the way Ottomans used their clocks conformed to the inner logic of their own temporal culture. However, this began to change rather dramatically during the nineteenth century, as the Ottoman Empire was increasingly assimilated into the European-dominated global economy and the project of modern state building began to gather momentum. In Reading Clocks, Alla Turca, Avner Wishnitzer unravels the complexity of Ottoman temporal culture and for the first time tells the story of its transformation. He explains that in their attempt to attain better surveillance capabilities and higher levels of regularity and efficiency, various organs of the reforming Ottoman state developed elaborate temporal constructs in which clocks played an increasingly important role. As the reform movement spread beyond the government apparatus, emerging groups of officers, bureaucrats, and urban professionals incorporated novel time-related ideas, values, and behaviors into their self-consciously “modern” outlook and lifestyle. Acculturated in the highly regimented environment of schools and barracks, they came to identify efficiency and temporal regularity with progress and the former temporal patterns with the old political order. Drawing on a wealth of archival and literary sources, Wishnitzer’s original and highly important work presents the shifting culture of time as an arena in which Ottoman social groups competed for legitimacy and a medium through which the very concept of modernity was defined. Reading Clocks, Alla Turca breaks new ground in the study of the Middle East and presents us with a new understanding of the relationship between time and modernity.

The Last Muslim Conquest

The Last Muslim Conquest PDF Author: Gábor Ágoston
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691205396
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
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 ended 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.