Description
In Islamic law the world was made up of the House of Islam and the House of War with the Ottoman Sultan--the perceived successor to the Caliphs--supreme ruler of the Islamic world. However, Suraiya Faroqhi demonstrates that there was no iron curtain between the Ottoman and other worlds but rather a long-established network of diplomatic, financial, cultural and religious connections. These extended to the empires of Asia and the modern states of Europe. Faroqhi's book is based on a huge study of original and early modern sources, including diplomatic records, travel and geographical writing, as well as personal accounts.
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In this wide-ranging book, Faroqhi (Ottoman studies, Ludwig Maximilians U., Munich, Germany) has transformed research of an impressive number of primary sources into an engaging history of the interaction of the Ottoman Empire with its neighbors, particularly those to its north. With an eye toward inter-cultural contact and its nature in each instance, there are chapters on the expansion and protection of the empire, clients and dependents, aspects of warfare, the use and treatment of slaves and prisoners, trade, pilgrims and pilgrimage, and the empire's sources of information about the outside world. The result is an impressive and rich compendium of four centuries of Islamic-European interaction. Distributed by Palgrave Macmillan. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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