Description
Book SynopsisChallenges the paradigm of the societal decline as inadequate for understanding the Ottoman society and state during this period. This book evaluates 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.
Trade ReviewAbou-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 to 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
