NEJS 188a: The “Rise” and “Decline” of the Ottoman Empire (Version 2.1, Aug 17)

Brandeis University, NEJS 188a Fall 2016

The “Rise” and “Decline” of the “Ottoman” Empire

Dr. Aaron Shakow

Email:

Office:Crown Center108

Phone: x6-5331

Office Hours: Tues. 5-6 BY APPOINTMENT

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Descendants of the medieval warlord Osman (or Atman) ruled over the dominant state in the eastern Mediterranean until the twentieth century. For 600 years the Ottoman dynasty played a key role in the unfolding of global history as it struggled to control the economic, socio-cultural and political estuary between Europe and Africa, on the one hand, and eastern Asia and the Indian subcontinent on the other. The strategic geographical setting gave rise to a multi-ethnic and syncretic society that existed in a creative tension with the symbols of Islamic sovereignty after the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in the early 1500s.

This weekly seminar will introduce students to important themes in the social, economic and political evolution of the state ruled by the Ottoman dynasty. Over the semester we will travel along the long arc of Ottoman history, observing the many overlapping identities that shaped it. Each week we will explore a different moment in the evolution of Ottoman state and society, beginning with its emergence in the frontier region of western Anatolia after the Mongol conquests; the expansion of its borders as Osman’s descendants conquered or assimilated neighboring communities; and cross-pollination through cultural, social and economic exchange.We will proceed to explore the impact of early-modern social and economic currents on relations between the Ottomans and their neighbors, and how those relations shaped, in turn, the emerging global society. Finally we will explore different aspects of modernity in the “Ottoman” sphere and their implications for recent social, economic, and political history. This includes debates on sovereign legitimacy, liberty and human rights, imperialism and colonialism, multi-culturalism, scientization, and the genesis of present-day geopolitical arrangements.

The class will be run as a classic seminar—students will play an active role in digesting, presenting, and debating the material. Each week (beginning in Week Four of the semester) I will assign a different student with the responsibility for leading the discussion.

TEXTS

All course readings will be available electronically via Latte—you will not be required to buy a textbook.

Periodically I will suggest supplementary readings (typically these will be recent works in Ottoman history or other disciplines that touch on our course material). These will be put on reserve at Goldfarb Library and also made available for purchase at the University bookstore.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Reaction Papers: 15% Midterm Exam: 30% Final Paper 30% Participation (incl. quizzes): 25%

  • Reaction papers (15%). In three 2-page papers (5% each) you will reflect on and respond to a particular week’s readings. These papers will be graded pass/fail. Reaction papers will be due in class onTuesday, September 20; Tuesday, October 11; and Tuesday, November 1.
  • Midterm exam (30%). The midterm will be take-home, consisting of five essay questions and 20 identification questions. The exam questions will be distributed on Tuesday October 11, and answers must be submitted via Latte before midnight Sunday, October 16. Students are to complete the midterm individually without consultation.
  • Final Paper (30%). This essay of 10-12 pages should discuss a particular attempt (by Ottoman rulers or subjects, their contemporaries, or modern scholars) to define the “Ottoman Empire.” A rough draft of this essay is due on Tuesday, November 29, and the final version is due on the last day of class Tuesday, December 6.
  • Participation (25%). The participation grade is made up of attendance and class participation, performance on quizzes, and formal presentation of the course material on those week(s) for which you are responsible. Class attendance is mandatory and will be recorded each week. Do not be late for class, as it is disrespectful and disruptive to me and to your fellow students. Repeated absences or tardiness not cleared with me in advance will result in the reduction of your grade. You are expected to complete all readings prior to coming to class, and must be prepared to both answer and pose questions about them. Students will be asked to facilitate discussion.

LEARNING GOALS

This seminar classseeks to give students an introduction to the broad range of Ottoman political, economic and social institutions from the rise of dynastic rule in the 1300s to the twentieth century.

Upon completion of this course, students should (1) be familiar with key institutions and events in Ottoman history, (2) be able to cite historical examples of exchange—in war and peace—between residents of the Ottoman state and those of neighboring principalities, and (3) have a clear sense of the way in which different interpretations of history become imbedded in cross-communal interactions. They should also (4) be able to distinguish between analytical arguments and polemical or apologetic arguments, and to deploy them appropriately in their own conversations or writing.

CLASSROOM CONDUCT

This class is a weekly seminar and students are expected to play an active role. Courtesy is a foundation of any seminar and this course is no exception. Therefore it is important that we maintain a conducive atmosphere in class. Except for group exercises, no computer or cell phone use is allowed in class(no texting, IMing, emailing, Web surfing, etc). Attendance is critical.

PREPARATION TIME

Success in this 4 credit hour course is based on the expectation that students will spend a minimum of 9 hours of study time per week in preparation for class (readings, papers, discussion sections, preparation for exams, etc.).

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

Students are expected to be familiar with Brandeis University policies on plagiarism and academic integrity Plagiarism will not be tolerated. If you submit any work with your name affixed to it, I assume that work is your own and that all sources are indicated and documented in the text (with quotations and/or citations). If you have any questions or concerns about the definition of plagiarism or scholarly citation practices, please talk to me.

WRITING CENTER

The Brandeis Writing Center free one-on-one advice on academic, creative, and professional writing and about all aspects of oral presentations. Go to

LIBRARY SERVICES

Brandeis libraries have wide array of services designed to aid your research, including personal research consultation appointments:

STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

I will make every effort to support and accommodate students with disabilities. If you have a faculty letter from Disability Services and Support (DSS) indicating that you have a disability that requires academic accommodations, please present the letter to me during my office hours. At that time, we can speak about the accommodations you might need in this class. If you need academic accommodations due to a disability and have not registered with DSS, please contact the them at 781-736-3470. I also encourage you to familiarize yourself with Brandeis's disability resources at

SCHEDULE

Dates and pages are approximate; class announcements override syllabus.

Readings must be completed by the class for which they are listed. I will freely call on students to test your engagement with and understanding of the readings. There will also be one or more pop quizzes during the course of the semester, which will be reflected in your participation grade.

Week OneTime Machine… from Coup to Coup (2016-1300)

Aug. 30News articles (classroom handout)

The Book of Dede Korkut (classroom handout)

Week TwoWarlords (1331)

Sep. 6Ross Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveller of

the Fourteenth Century, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of

California Press, 2005, pp. 137-156.

Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman

Empire, New York: Basic Books, 2007, pp. 1-21.

Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe,

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.

27-54.

Warren Treadgold, A History of Byzantine State and Society, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1997, pp. 747-783.

Doukas, Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks, tr. Harry J. Magoulias, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975, pp. 59-111.

→MAP QUIZ

Week ThreeFishermen (1416)

Sep. 13Nazim Hikmet, “The Epic of Sheikh Bedreddin” (1936)

John Darwin, After Tamerlane, pp. 1-45.

Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power, 2nd ed., London: Palgrave McMillan, 2009, pp. 8-22, 87-99.

Dimitris Kastritsis, The sons of Bayezid: empire building and representation in the Ottoman civil war of 1402-1413, Leiden: Brill, 2007, pp. 1-11.

Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1975, pp. 3-22.

Ethel Wolper, Cities and saints: Sufism and the transformation of urban space in medieval Anatolia, University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003, pp. 16-81.

Week FourRomans (1453)

Sep. 20Walter G. Andrews, Mehmet Kalpakli, The Age of Beloveds: Love

and the Beloved in Early-Modern Ottoman and European Culture

and Society, Durham: Duke University Press, 2005, pp. 1-31.

Kenneth Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, Vol. 2, pp. 108-137.

Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and

the Ottoman Turks, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

2004, pp. 43-93.

Halil Inalcik, A Social and Economic History of the Ottoman Empire, Vol.

1: 1300-1600, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1994, pp. 188-208, 218-243.

Imber, pp. 23-37, 118-137.

→REACTION PAPER #1 DUE

1

NEJS 188a: The “Rise” and “Decline” of the Ottoman Empire (Version 2.1, Aug 17)

Week FiveExiles (1492)

Sep. 27Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003, pp. 19-34.

Minna Rozen, “Individual and Community in the Jewish Society of the Ottoman Empire,” in Levy, ed., The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 215-73.

Henry Kamen, “The Mediterranean and the Expulsion of the Spanish Jews in 1492,” Past and Present 1988; 119 (1): 30-55.

Goffman, pp. 169-188.

Imber, pp. 37-66.

Finkel, pp. 81-97.

Week Six

Oct. 4Rosh HashanahHoliday, no class

Week SevenCaliphs (1518)

Oct. 11Leslie Pierce, The imperial harem: women and sovereignty in the Ottoman

Empire, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 3-

27.

Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration,Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

I. Metin Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants:: the transformation of Ottoman provincial government, 1550-1650, New York: Columbia University Press, 1983, pp. 31-99.

Goffman, pp. 59-92.

Inalcik, pp. 55-102.

→REACTION PAPER #2 DUE

→TAKE-HOME MIDTERM EXAM ASSIGNED

Week EightCorsairs (1571)

Oct. 18Casale, pp. 131-203.

Palmira Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacyin the Age of Discovery, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994., pp. 95-143.

Andrew C. Hess, “The Moriscos: An Ottoman Fifth Column in Sixteenth-Century Spain,”American Historical Review 1968; 74(1):1-25.

Andrews and Kalpakli, The Age of Beloveds, pp. 304-328

Peirce, The Imperial Harem, pp. 57-91.

OPTIONAL: Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean

World in the Age of Philip II, tr. Sian Reynolds, New York:

Harper and Row, 1972 [1949], pp. 570-641, 672-78, 1055-1106.

→TAKE-HOME MIDTERM EXAM DUE

Week Nine

Oct. 25Brandeis Day, no class (Monday schedule)

Week TenKadis (1616)

Nov. 1David Abulafia, The Great Sea, pp. 452-469.

Elyse Semerdjian, "Off the Straight Path": Illicit Sex, Law, and

Community in Ottoman Aleppo, Ithaca: Syracuse University Press, 2008.

Leslie Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003.

Shakow, “The Carazo Affair,” (2009)

→REACTION PAPER #3 DUE

Week ElevenSurveyors (1699)

Nov. 8Robert Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliya

Çelebi, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006.

Rifaat Abou El Haj, “The Formal Closure of the Ottoman Frontier

in Europe: 1699-1703,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1969; 89(3): 467-75.

→FINAL PAPER WORKSHEET DUE

Week TwelvePallbearers (1761)

Nov. 15Salzmann, Ariel. 1993. "An Ancien Regime Revisited: "Privatization"

and Political Economy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman

Empire." Politics & Society 21 (4): 393-423.

Patrick Russell, A Treatise of the Plague, Containing an Historical Journal, and Medical Account, of the Plague, At Aleppo, in the Years 1760, 1761, and 1762, London: G.G. and J. Robinson, 1791, pp. 14-68.

Abraham Marcus, The Middle East On the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the 18th Century, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992, pp. 252-276.

Week ThirteenSpies (1798)

Nov. 22Abd Al-Rahman Jabarti, Napoleon in Egypt: Al-Jabartī's Chronicle of the

French Occupation, 1798, tr. Smuel Moreh,Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1993.

Juan Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East, New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2007.

Week FourteenLambs to the Slaughter (1860)

Nov. 29Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922 New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Roger Owen, The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914,

London and New York: Methuen, 1981.

Leila Tarazi Fawaz, An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in

Lebanon and Damascus in 1860, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University

of California Press, 1994.

→FINAL PAPER ROUGH DRAFTS DUE

Week Fifteen Citizens (1908)

Dec. 6William L. Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East, 4th ed., Boulder, CO, : Westview Press, 2008), pp. 102-189.

Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010), pp. 1-19, 197-223.

Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (New York: Free Press, 2008), pp. 11-34, 134-164.

→FINAL PAPER DUE

1