Search results for ""Author Turk"

Against the backdrop of Nazism, in a multi-racial Turkey giving sanctuary to many of Europe's fleeing Jews, a group of teenage friends struggles to understand events while reeling from the sexual and emotional discoveries of adolescence. An alluring woman initiates Mustafa and his classmates in the carnal delights of rose petal jam; Musa discovers the hard facts of reaching manhood when he is expelled from the women's baths; Bilal, a fourteen-year-old Jewish boy, sets off for Greece to rescue his mother's sister; and a circus orphan known only as `Girl' falls head over heels for the new trapeze artist ... Young Turk is a wise, craftily-spun and spine-tinglingly erotic tale of love, courage and the forging of conscience.

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During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ottoman empire posed a clear and present danger to Christian rule in Europe. While English commerce with the Mediterranean world expanded, Ottoman forces invaded Greece, Hungary, and Austria. At the same time, "Turkish" pirates and renegades from North Africa roamed the Atlantic and raided the coast of England. The threat was ideological as well: English sailors captured by Barbary pirates sometimes renounced their faith and converted to Islam. Here, three important early modern "Turk" plays-Robert Greene's Selimus, Emperor of the Turks (1594); Robert Daborne's A Christian Turned Turk (1612); and Philip Massinger's The Renegado (1623)-are available for the first time. These texts represent Islamic power and wealth in scenes of piracy on the high seas, on-stage execution by strangulation, and rites of religious conversion. The plays are set in historical and cultural context by Daniel J. Vitkus's clear and thoughtful introduction. These carefully edited, annotated, modern-spelling editions are particularly valuable for understanding the cultural production of English identity in relation to the Islamic Other.

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A small undercover unit of hand-picked, trusted warriors is assembled to track down the thieves who have stolen the Staff held by Moses as he parted the Red Sea. They are the `Ruzgar' - the `Wind' - and like the wind, they travel silently and unseen. Awa, the studious daughter of a noble family from the Songhai Empire in West Africa, was kidnapped and enslaved by Moroccans after the disastrous Battle of Tondibi. Awa is a whirling and deadly force when she has a scimitar in her hand. Will, who was snatched from his home in London at the age of 5, is now 16 and a galley slave on board a Moroccan warship. Joining the Ruzgar turns him into a man. He and Awa become fast friends. The other comrades are Turkish, Greek and Albanian, all led by the charismatic Bosnian Mehmed Konjic, a wise counsellor and natural hero. The Ruzgar's pursuit of a network of rogues takes them across continents and into many perilous situations. The action is fast and furious, with dire situations requiring a Houdini to escape from . . . set against thrilling backdrops including deserts, oceans, dungeons, the roofs of the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul, the canals of Venice and the court of Queen Elizabeth I at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey. The task to reclaim the Staff is a mission that is (almost) impossible . . .

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Trina Turk Multi Puzzle Set by Galison includes three 250 piece puzzles featuring Trina Turk's colorful op-art prints, creating a challenging and fun puzzle experience. When completed, turn these puzzles into a framed triptych! Box: 9.25 x 7 x 2, 235 x 178 x 51 mm Set of Three 250 Piece Puzzles Puzzle Size: 8.5 x 15, 220 x 380 mm Color-coded on reverse for sorting Includes 3 Puzzle Inserts

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The dawn of the 20th century changed the world irreversibly. In those days, the two sick men of the East, the Ottoman Empire and Chinas Qing Dynasty, were each facing a major crisis. Kang Youwei, a prominent Chinese philosopher and reformer, arrived in the Ottoman capital in 1908. His work reflects how the Ottoman Empire was viewed from a Chinese philosophers inimitable perspective. This book comprises a full translation of Kang Youweis unique travelogue of the Ottoman Empire during the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.

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When a Turkish labourer is stabbed to death in Frankfurt's red light district the local police see no reason to work overtime. Kemal Kayankaya, however has a different attitude. He is 26, born in Turkey, raised in Germany and now working as a Private Investigator. He has a German passport but has first hand experience of resentment against foreigners and now Hamul's wife, Ilter, has hired Kayankaya to find out who murdered her husband. In the 3 days it takes him to wrap up the case, he has time to identify Ilter's sister as a heroin addict, track down Ahmed's girlfriend [a prostitute], link his father-in-law's fatal accident three years earlier to an ingenious police cover-up, and still survive beatings, gas attacks and a close encounter with a Fiat.

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Imagine a puzzle. A magic puzzle. It features the head of a Turk, it's big and complicated, and when you finish assembling it, the person you think about at that moment is smashed into a thousand pieces! Now, imagine how many ways things can go wrong if Iznogoud of all people tries to use that puzzle, hmm? Sirens, shrinking potions, magic calendars - All fantastic opportunities for disasters to occur - and hilarity to ensue!

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British artist Gavin Turk (born 1967) has been at the forefront of contemporary sculpture since the late ‘80s, with his painted bronzes, waxworks, recyclings of art-historical icons and imaginative use of trash. Throughout his career, Turk’s sculptures have dealt with issues of authorship, authenticity and identity, working to demystify or parody the myth of the artist. This fully illustrated catalog is published for Turk’s show at Damien Hirst’s new London exhibition space, Newport Street Gallery. The volume spans the duration of the artist’s career to date, featuring his most important pieces from his seminal blue-plaque work, “Cave,” through his many signature-based artworks, egg sculptures and waxworks, to his more recent bronze casts of sleeping bags and trash bags. Featuring three gatefolds, it also includes essays by psychoanalyst and author Darian Leader and Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri, plus a conversation with Hirst.

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Trina Turk 1000 Piece Puzzle by Galison combines three Trina Turk prints to create a sunny, warm, Palm Springs-inspired puzzle. Galison puzzles are packaged in matte-finish sturdy boxes, perfect for gifting, reuse, and storage. 1000 pieces, Ribbon Cut Box: 8.5 x 10 x 2, 210 x 286 x 51mm Puzzle: 20 x 27, 508 x 686 mm Minimal Puzzle Dust Includes Puzzle Insert Puzzle greyboard contains 90% recycled paper. Packaging contains 70% recycled paper and is made responsibly from FSC-certified material. Printed with nontoxic inks

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Trina Turk 500 Piece Double Sided Puzzle with shaped pieces from Galison features two distinctly different abstract puzzle images as well as 15 geometrically shaped jigsaw pieces. Puzzle pieces are printed matte on one side and glossy on the other side for easy sorting. Galison puzzles are packaged in matte-finish sturdy boxes, perfect for gifting, reuse, and storage. 500 Pieces, Ribbon Cut Box: 8.75 x 8.75 x 2.25, 222 x 222 x 57 mm Puzzle: 20 x 20, 508 x 508 mm Includes 15 geometrically shaped jigsaw pieces Includes Puzzle Insert with Puzzle Image Puzzle greyboard contains 90% recycled paper. Packaging contains 70% recycled paper and is made responsibly from FSC-certified material. Printed with nontoxic inks

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Eighty years have passed since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded the Turkish Republic out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and set it on the path of modernisation. He was determined that his country should be accepted as a member of the family of civilised nations. Today Turkey is a rapidly developing country, an emergent market and a medium-sized regional power with the second strongest army in NATO. It is an open country which attracts millions of tourists, thousands of foreign businessmen and hundreds of researchers. They enjoy Turkish hospitality and experience its rich landscape and history, but many find it hard to form an overall picture of the country.In this sequel to his acclaimed biography of Atatürk, Andrew Mango provides such an overall portrait, tracing the republic's development since the death of its founder and bringing to life the Turkish people and their vibrant society. The Turks Today interprets the latest academic research for a broader audience, making this highly readable book the authoritative work on modern Turkey.

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This volume collects 24 papers on the medieval Turks by one of the world's leading experts on medieval Islamic history. It covers themes such as nomadism, shamanism, clan and social structure, the role of women, military expertise, engagement with Islamic orthodoxy and the daily interface between Turks and non-Turks.

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In the wake of the fear that gripped Europe after the fall of Constantinople (1453), the English dramatists joined most continental artists (literary and visual) in representing the Ottoman Turks in plays inspired by historical events. As the many subjective elements involved in the stereotyping of the Turks in these plays -- revolving around complex themes such as tyranny, captivity, war, and conquests -- arose from their perception of Islam, Ottoman milieu as a dramatic setting provided for the English audiences a common experience of fascination and fear of the Other. The Ottomans' failure in the second siege of Vienna (1683), however, became a factor in the reversal of trends in the representation of the Turks on stage. As the ascending strength of a web of European alliances began to check further the Ottoman expansion, what then began to dazzle the aesthetic imagination of the eighteenth century England was the sultan's seraglio with images of extravaganza and decadence. In this book, Esin Akalin draws upon a selective range of seventeenth and eighteenth century plays to reach an understanding, both from a non-European perspective and Western standpoint how one culture represents the other through discourse, historiography, and drama. The book explores a cluster of issues revolving around identity and difference in terms of history, ideology, and politics of representation. In contextualising political, cultural, and intellectual roots in the ideology of representing the Ottoman/Muslim as the Wests Other, the author, ultimately, tackles with the questions of how history serves literature and to what extent literature creates history.

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Whether you want to hit the beach at Grace Bay, scuba dive along the Columbus Passage, or relax at a luxury resort on Providenciales, the local Fodor’s travel experts in Turks & Caicos are here to help! Fodor’s In Focus Turks & Caicos Islands guidebook is packed with maps, carefully curated recommendations, and everything else you need to simplify your trip-planning process and make the most of your time. This new edition has been fully-redesigned with an easy-to-read layout, fresh information, and beautiful color photos. Fodor’s InFocus Turks & Caicos travel guide includes: AN ILLUSTRATED ULTIMATE EXPERIENCES GUIDE to the top things to see and do MULTIPLE ITINERARIES to effectively organize your days and maximize your time MORE THAN 8 DETAILED MAPS to help you navigate confidently COLOR PHOTOS throughout to spark your wanderlust! HONEST RECOMMENDATIONS FROM LOCALS on the best sights, restaurants, hotels, nightlife, shopping, performing arts, activities, and more PHOTO-FILLED “BEST OF” FEATURES on “The Best Beaches in the Turks & Caicos Islands,” “Best Outdoor Activities in the Turks & Caicos,” “Best Hotels for Kids and Families,” and more TRIP-PLANNING TOOLS AND PRACTICAL TIPS including when to go, getting around, beating the crowds, and saving time and money HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL INSIGHTS providing rich context on the local people, politics, art, architecture, cuisine, music, geography, and more SPECIAL FEATURES on “What to Watch and Read Before You Visit,” and “What's New" LOCAL WRITERS to help you find the under-the-radar gems UP-TO-DATE COVERAGE ON: Providenciales, Grace Bay, Turtle Cove, The Bight, Long Bay, Chalk Sound, Little Water Cay, Pine Cay, Fort George Cay, Dellis Cay, Parrot Cay, North Caicos, Middle Caicos, South Caicos, Grand Turk, Salt Cay, and more Planning on visiting other Caribbean beach destinations? Check out Fodor’s Bahamas, Fodor's In Focus St. Maarten/St. Martin, St. Barth & Anguilla, Fodor's In Focus Cayman Islands, and Fodor's InFocus Barbados & St. Lucia.*Important note for digital editions: The digital edition of this guide does not contain all the images or text included in the physical edition.ABOUT FODOR'S AUTHORS: Each Fodor's Travel Guide is researched and written by local experts. Fodor’s has been offering expert advice for all tastes and budgets for over 80 years. For more travel inspiration, you can sign up for our travel newsletter at fodors.com/newsletter/signup, or follow us @FodorsTravel on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We invite you to join our friendly community of travel experts at fodors.com/community to ask any other questions and share your experience with us!

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A lot has changed the in two years since the Lifestream erupted, and a new city, Edge, has been born from the wreckage. There, a young man and woman run a private detective agency, but then they run into the infamous Turks of the Shinra Electric Power Company... The world of Final Fantasy VII expands with this prequel to the events of Advent Children!

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Drawing on qualitative research conducted in Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders, Islam and Turks in Belgium examines the interdependence between Muslim community and association. With a focus on social groups, religious structures and circles within Turkish populations, this book demonstrates how communal and associative movements operate through a combination of relationships of proximity and distance. Proximity is a way in which Muslim organisations establish religious, social, and cultural ties with communities. Distance, on the other hand, takes into account social, historical, and political elements from abroad, and refers to the relationship with the Muslim world more broadly. As this reciprocal web of relations gives rise to Islamic mobilisations, it leads to the emergence or persistence of different figures of authority within associations and communities who articulate traditional, charismatic, and bureaucratic legitimacies.This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the sociology of religion, migration, race, ethnicity and Islamic studies.

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This book, first published in 1973, was regarded on publication as the definitive study of the 'Young Turks', or Committee of Union and Progress, the name given to a group of Turkish army officers who sought to reform the Ottoman Empire and who in 1908 led a constitutional revolution against Sultan Ahmed Hamid II. The author also discusses the counter-revolution of 1909 and the emergence of the 'Group of Saviour officers' who formed a cabinet determined to destroy the Young Turks. With the rout of the Ottoman armies in the First Balkan War and the loss of Macedonia, the Unionists, led by the charismatic Enver Bey, carried out a coup on 23 January 1913 and regained power. Thereafter they pursued a more moderate and conciliatory policy abandoning the idea of 'union'. The book concludes by examining the impact of territorial losses and of six years of revolution and war on the Ottoman state and society.

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The Saljūqnāma, very probably penned between 1177 and 1186 by Zahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūri, is one of the main sources of the political, social an cultural events in the history of the The Great Saljūq and the Saljūq o Iraq. Dedicated to Abū Ṭālīb Ṭughril b. Arslan the last Iraqi Saljuq ruler (1177-1194), the work is the first known Saljūqnāma and a main referece for the historians studying the Saljūq history, which makes the work extremely outstanding and notable. Depending on the work of A.H. Moton, who first found and published The Saljūqnāma in 2004, after comparing the manuscript with the other related historical records, this work is the first complete English translation of Nīshāpūrī’s work with a meti lous study on the Persian version and the Turkish translation of the manuscript.

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While European powers were at war with the Ottoman Empire for much of the eighteenth century, European opera houses were staging operas featuring singing sultans and pashas surrounded by their musical courts and harems. Mozart wrote The Abduction from the Seraglio. Rossini created a series of works, including The Italian Girl in Algiers. And these are only the best known of a vast repertory. This book explores how these representations of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the great nemesis of Christian Europe, became so popular in the opera house and what they illustrate about European–Ottoman international relations. After Christian armies defeated the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683, the Turks no longer seemed as threatening. Europeans increasingly understood that Turkish issues were also European issues, and the political absolutism of the sultan in Istanbul was relevant for thinking about politics in Europe, from the reign of Louis XIV to the age of Napoleon. While Christian European composers and publics recognized that Muslim Turks were, to some degree, different from themselves, this difference was sometimes seen as a matter of exotic costume and setting. The singing Turks of the stage expressed strong political perspectives and human emotions that European audiences could recognize as their own.

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While European powers were at war with the Ottoman Empire for much of the eighteenth century, European opera houses were staging operas featuring singing sultans and pashas surrounded by their musical courts and harems. Mozart wrote The Abduction from the Seraglio. Rossini created a series of works, including The Italian Girl in Algiers. And these are only the best known of a vast repertory. This book explores how these representations of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the great nemesis of Christian Europe, became so popular in the opera house and what they illustrate about European–Ottoman international relations. After Christian armies defeated the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683, the Turks no longer seemed as threatening. Europeans increasingly understood that Turkish issues were also European issues, and the political absolutism of the sultan in Istanbul was relevant for thinking about politics in Europe, from the reign of Louis XIV to the age of Napoleon. While Christian European composers and publics recognized that Muslim Turks were, to some degree, different from themselves, this difference was sometimes seen as a matter of exotic costume and setting. The singing Turks of the stage expressed strong political perspectives and human emotions that European audiences could recognize as their own.

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Though Egypt was ruled by Turkish-speakers through most of the period from the ninth century until 1952, the impact of Turkish culture there remains under-studied. This book deals with the period from 1805 to 1952, during which Turkish cultural patterns, spread through reforms based on those of Istanbul, may have touched more Egyptians than ever before. An examination of the books, newspapers, and other written materials produced in Turkish, including translations, and of the presses involved, reveals the rise and decline of Turkish culture in government, the military, education, literature, music, and everyday life. The author also describes the upsurge in Turkish writing generated by Young Turk exiles from 1895 to 1909. Included is a CD containing appendices of extensive bibliographic information concerning books and periodicals printed in Egypt during this period.

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This book is the second in a new series profiling the Knight’s Cross holders of the Wehrmacht in World War II. Concise biographies, rare photographs of personalities, aircraft, and award documents cover not only known soldiers and airmen, but lesser known KC holders as well. This volume covers two famed Luftwaffe fighter aces – Heinz Bär and Joachim Müncheberg – Army infantry officer Gerhard Türke, and Luftwaffe NCO Arnold Huebner.

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The assassination in Istanbul in 2007 of the author Hrant Dink, the high-profile advocate of Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, reignited the debate in Turkey on the annihilation of the Ottoman Armenians. Many Turks subsequently reawakened to their Armenian heritage, in the process reflecting on how their grandparents were forcibly Islamised and Turkified, and the suffering they endured to keep their stories secret. There was public debate about Armenian property confiscated by the Turkish state and books were published about the extermination of the minorities. The silence had been broken. After the First World War, Turkey forcibly erased the memory of the atrocities, and traces of Armenians, from their historic lands, to which the international community turned a blind eye. The price for this amnesia was, Cheterian argues, 'a century of genocide'.Turkish intellectuals acknowledge the price a society must pay collectively to forget such traumatic events, and that Turkey cannot solve its recurrent conflicts with its minorities - like the Kurds today - nor have an open and democratic society without addressing its original sin: the Armenian Genocide, on which the Republic was founded.

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This book tells the story of the Dönme, the descendents of Jews who resided in the Ottoman Empire and converted to Islam along with their messiah, Rabbi Shabbatai Tzevi, in the seventeenth century. For two centuries following their conversion, the Dönme were accepted as Muslims, and by the end of the nineteenth century rose to the top of Salonikan society. The Dönme helped transform Salonika into a cosmopolitan city, promoting the newest innovation in trade and finance, urban reform, and modern education. They eventually became the driving force behind the 1908 revolution that led to the overthrow of the Ottoman sultan and the establishment of a secular republic. To their proponents, the Dönme are enlightened secularists and Turkish nationalists who fought against the dark forces of superstition and religious obscurantism. To their opponents, they were simply crypto-Jews engaged in a plot to dissolve the Islamic empire. Both points of view assume the Dönme were anti-religious, whether couched as critique or praise. But it is time that we take these religious people seriously on their own terms. In the Ottoman Empire, the Dönme promoted morality, ethics, spirituality, and a syncretistic religion that reflected their origins at the intersection of Jewish Kabbalah and Islamic Sufism. This is the first book to tell their story, from their origins to their near total dissolution as they became secular Turks in the mid-twentieth century.

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Arabs and Young Turks provides a detailed study of Arab politics in the late Ottoman Empire as viewed from the imperial capital in Istanbul. In an analytical narrative of the Young Turk period (1908-1918) historian Hasan Kayali discusses Arab concerns on the one hand and the policies of the Ottoman government toward the Arabs on the other. Kayali's novel use of documents from the Ottoman archives, as well as Arabic sources and Western and Central European documents, enables him to reassess conventional wisdom on this complex subject and to present an original appraisal of proto-nationalist ideologies as the longest-living Middle Eastern dynasty headed for collapse. He demonstrates the persistence and resilience of the supranational ideology of Islamism which overshadowed Arab and Turkish ethnic nationalism in this crucial transition period. Kayali's study reaches back to the nineteenth century and highlights both continuity and change in Arab-Turkish relations from the reign of Abdulhamid II to the constitutional period ushered in by the revolution of 1908. Arabs and Young Turks is essential for an understanding of contemporary issues such as Islamist politics and the continuing crises of nationalism in the Middle East.

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As the Ottoman Empire advanced westward from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, humanists responded on a grand scale, leaving behind a large body of fascinating yet understudied works. These compositions included Crusade orations and histories; ethnographic, historical, and religious studies of the Turks; epic poetry; and even tracts on converting the Turks to Christianity. Most scholars have seen this vast literature as atypical of Renaissance humanism. Nancy Bisaha now offers an in-depth look at the body of Renaissance humanist works that focus not on classical or contemporary Italian subjects but on the Ottoman Empire, Islam, and the Crusades. Throughout, Bisaha probes these texts to reveal the significant role Renaissance writers played in shaping Western views of self and other. Medieval concepts of Islam were generally informed and constrained by religious attitudes and rhetoric in which Muslims were depicted as enemies of the faith. While humanist thinkers of the Renaissance did not move entirely beyond this stance, Creating East and West argues that their understanding was considerably more complex, in that it addressed secular and cultural issues, marking a watershed between the medieval and modern. Taking a close look at a number of texts, Bisaha expands current notions of Renaissance humanism and of the history of cross-cultural perceptions. Engaging both traditional methods of intellectual history and more recent methods of cross-cultural studies, she demonstrates that modern attitudes of Western societies toward other cultures emerged not during the later period of expansion and domination but rather as a defensive intellectual reaction to a sophisticated and threatening power to the East.

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What compels Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and abroad to promote a positive image of Ottomans and Turks while they deny the Armenian genocide and the existence of antisemitism in Turkey? Based on historical narrative, the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 were embraced by the Ottoman Empire and then, later, protected from the Nazis during WWII. If we believe that Turks and Jews have lived in harmony for so long, then how can we believe that the Turks could have committed genocide against the Armenians? Marc David Baer confronts these convictions and circumstances to reflect on what moral responsibility the descendants of the victims of one genocide have to the descendants of victims of another. Baer delves into the history of Muslim-Jewish relations in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey to find the origin of these many tangled truths. He aims to bring about reconciliation between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, not only to face inconvenient historical facts but to confront it and come to terms. By looking at the complexities of interreligious relations, Holocaust denial, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and confronting some long-standing historical stereotypes, Baer sets out to tell a new history that goes against Turkish antisemitism and admits to the Armenian genocide.

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This book tells the story of the Dönme, the descendents of Jews who resided in the Ottoman Empire and converted to Islam along with their messiah, Rabbi Shabbatai Tzevi, in the seventeenth century. For two centuries following their conversion, the Dönme were accepted as Muslims, and by the end of the nineteenth century rose to the top of Salonikan society. The Dönme helped transform Salonika into a cosmopolitan city, promoting the newest innovation in trade and finance, urban reform, and modern education. They eventually became the driving force behind the 1908 revolution that led to the overthrow of the Ottoman sultan and the establishment of a secular republic. To their proponents, the Dönme are enlightened secularists and Turkish nationalists who fought against the dark forces of superstition and religious obscurantism. To their opponents, they were simply crypto-Jews engaged in a plot to dissolve the Islamic empire. Both points of view assume the Dönme were anti-religious, whether couched as critique or praise. But it is time that we take these religious people seriously on their own terms. In the Ottoman Empire, the Dönme promoted morality, ethics, spirituality, and a syncretistic religion that reflected their origins at the intersection of Jewish Kabbalah and Islamic Sufism. This is the first book to tell their story, from their origins to their near total dissolution as they became secular Turks in the mid-twentieth century.

Read more less

The assassination in Istanbul in 2007 of the author Hrant Dink, the high-profile advocate of Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, reignited the debate in Turkey on the annihilation of the Ottoman Armenians. Many Turks subsequently reawakened to their Armenian heritage, in the process reflecting on how their grandparents were forcibly Islamised and Turkified, and the suffering they endured to keep their stories secret. There was public debate about Armenian property confiscated by the Turkish state and books were published about the extermination of the minorities. The silence had been broken. After the First World War, Turkey forcibly erased the memory of the atrocities, and traces of Armenians, from their historic lands, to which the international community turned a blind eye. The price for this amnesia was, Cheterian argues, 'a century of genocide'.Turkish intellectuals acknowledge the price a society must pay collectively to forget such traumatic events, and that Turkey cannot solve its recurrent conflicts with its minorities - like the Kurds today - nor have an open and democratic society without addressing its original sin: the Armenian Genocide, on which the Republic was founded.

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Analyses British pressure to partition and ultimately destroy the Ottoman Empire

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In this book Walter Weiker explores the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and the Jews to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. That expulsion had the immediate consequence of enlarging the Jewish presence in the Ottoman Empire, particularly what is today Turkey and the adjacent areas of the Balkans. Weiker not only provides a full account of the Turkish Jews' intellectual and cultural contributions dating back to the Byzantine Empire and continuing through the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, its rise and decline, and its twentieth century transformation into the Turkish Republic, but he does so from a perspective of Jewish political history.

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As the Ottoman Empire advanced westward from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, humanists responded on a grand scale, leaving behind a large body of fascinating yet understudied works. These compositions included Crusade orations and histories; ethnographic, historical, and religious studies of the Turks; epic poetry; and even tracts on converting the Turks to Christianity. Most scholars have seen this vast literature as atypical of Renaissance humanism. Nancy Bisaha now offers an in-depth look at the body of Renaissance humanist works that focus not on classical or contemporary Italian subjects but on the Ottoman Empire, Islam, and the Crusades. Throughout, Bisaha probes these texts to reveal the significant role Renaissance writers played in shaping Western views of self and other. Medieval concepts of Islam were generally informed and constrained by religious attitudes and rhetoric in which Muslims were depicted as enemies of the faith. While humanist thinkers of the Renaissance did not move entirely beyond this stance, Creating East and West argues that their understanding was considerably more complex, in that it addressed secular and cultural issues, marking a watershed between the medieval and modern. Taking a close look at a number of texts, Bisaha expands current notions of Renaissance humanism and of the history of cross-cultural perceptions. Engaging both traditional methods of intellectual history and more recent methods of cross-cultural studies, she demonstrates that modern attitudes of Western societies toward other cultures emerged not during the later period of expansion and domination but rather as a defensive intellectual reaction to a sophisticated and threatening power to the East.

Read more less