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Notify me when its in stockEscaping the Founding Spiral: The Ottoman Empire and Conceptions of Sovereignty
Was the Ottoman World Empire the achievement of a nomadic tribe that began with merely four hundred tents, or was it the institutions inherited from Byzantium that enabled this magnificent state to endure for six centuries? Questions and arguments such as these have shaped a century of Ottoman historiography. The emergence of the Ottoman foundation as a scholarly problem dates to the twentieth century. During this period, numerous studies produced both in Turkey and abroad sought to illuminate the issue. However, while the intellectual assumptions underlying these studies were rarely subjected to critical examination, the problem of Ottoman origins often became a field upon which ideological agendas were projected.
Drawing on these considerations, Ahmet Demirhan’s book analyzes the dominant theories of Ottoman origins advanced by scholars ranging from Gibbons and Wittek to Köprülü, Imber, Kafadar, and İnalcık. The author develops the provocative thesis that “the Ottoman foundation problem is itself the problem.”
Escaping the Founding Spiral is an important work that both broadens the horizons of the debates surrounding Ottoman origins and provides a valuable description and classification of the existing scholarship.
Author: Ahmet Demirhan
Publisher: Dergah Publications
ISBN: 978-975-995-972-2
Binding: Paperback
Language: Turkish
Dimensions: 16.5 × 23.5 cm
Page Count: 408 pages
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