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AudibleInk - Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire
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List Price: $17.00
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Manufacturer: Picador
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.1015
EAN: 9780312420666
ISBN: 0312420668
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Publisher: Picador
Studio: Picador
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Editorial Reviews:
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For six hundred years, the Ottoman Empire swelled and declined. Islamic, martial, civilized, and tolerant, it advanced in three centuries from the dusty foothills of Anatolia to rule on the Danube and the Nile; at its height, Indian rajahs and the kings of France beseeched the empire's aid. In its last three hundred years the empire seemed ready to collapse, a prodigy of survival and decay. In this striking evocation of the empire's power, Jason Goodwin explores how the Ottomans rose and how, against all odds, they lingered on. In doing so, he also offers a long look back to the origins of problems that plague present-day Kosovars and Serbs.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Ottomans Return
Comment: Sometimes a history ends up being more poetic and moving than a work of fiction. This is one of those histories. Beautifully written and unpredictable, here is the tale of an empire whose demise created rifts that still have to be addressed, much less solved, in our post Iron-Curtain, post 9/11 world.
Superb.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Ottoman World View
Comment: Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire
In "Lords of the Horizons" Jason Goodwin presents a leisurely, anecdotal history of the Ottoman Empire. He provides the obligatory outline of Sultans, conquests, defeats and the like, but more importantly gives the reader an idea of how the Ottomans lived..
He traces the concept of The City through the development of Constantinople into Istanbul, the Ottoman idea of family and society, and the cruel reality of the Sultanate. (Sultans-to-be were kept cloistered in "The Cage" within the Harem until their time came to be elevated to the sultanate. If they didn't die of sexual exhaustion, they were likely to be assassinated)
Particularly interesting is the Ottoman concept of time and space: "There is no past, there is no hereafter, everything is in a process of becoming." "The Ottomans felt the geomancer's horror of hard lines, dead spaces and sharp angles. For all their bravery, at home they were afraid of dark corners....an Ottoman did not particularly like to view all his possessions foursquare around him: he preferred things gathered in bags, slung over a hook." "Indeed, anything too flat, or fixed, or straight bore the odor of death, the sty amp of Final Immobility." To the Ottoman, "Time was circular, not linear."
The Ottoman Empire persisted for centuries, despite predictions of its imminent demise. It wasn't until the Armistice of World War I that the empire was disbanded, and most of the Middle East divided among Britain, France and the other Allies.
Out of the ruins of empire the war hero Mustafa Kamal, who later took the name "Ataturk", formed the secular state of modern Turkey.
Goodwin has done an admirable job of recreating the Ottoman World View.
But for a thorough history of the Ottoman Empire, I suggest "Osman's Dream" by Finkel or "Ottoman Centuries" by Lord Kinross.
Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Centuries
Customer Rating:
Summary: delightful, fascinating, and deep
Comment: This book offers a stark contrast to Kinross' The Ottoman Centuries. Kinross' book is dry, stuffily pedantic, and laden with the details of obscure territorial skirmishes. While I learned the outlines of Ottoman history in Kinross, it was this book that gave me a true flavor for that vanished world - who the people were, why they acted the way they did, and how things appeared in the context of the time. It is a dazzling and confidently erudite tour of life then (without a whiff of pretension), and I was utterly engrossed from the minute I opened the book. Indeed, I was not intending to read this now, but I simply could not put it down when I looked at it out of curiosity.
This is not conventional history, but a flowing narrative that skips around in time; the subject matter of the chapters are organized as dense essays on military affairs, the populations within the Empire, and governance practices. The author went directly to the original sources of memoirs, diplomatic correspondence, and military communiques, always good for the beautiful, quirky anecdote. Many readers did not like this loose style, but I thought it made the book extremely fun and readable and vivid. Nonetheless, without Kinross, this would have been a far more difficult read and perhaps at many points incomprehensible. As such, the books are complementary and can be read together at great profit. But this book is a genuine literary masterpiece that left me in awe of the author's talent.
The story is incredible: from a small band of tough nomads in the steppes of Asia, several outstanding leaders created the first truly professional army since the Roman age. To the aristocratic knights in Europe - bound by chivalric conventions and a cumbersome military apparatus with untrustworthy mercenaries - the Turks appeared as a terrifying and unstoppable force of fierce and disciplined warriors. For 200 years, they advanced into the heart of Europe and conquered large portions of Asia Minor and North Africa with dreams of world domination that appeared all too credible to contemporary observers. The Ottomans also created a multi-ethnic society that for the times was tolerant and inclusive, did not seek to convert its subjects (they could tax non-Muslims afterall), and was more or less a meritocracy based on ability more than privilege.
Unfortunately, once the empiric expansion stopped, most of its virtues became deadly liabilities. During the Renaissance, the Ottoman Empire abruptly stalled and then became famously corrupt and decadent, after a series of leaders who can only be called military geniuses. Their administrative skills never advanced beyond the phenomenally innovative organization of military camps to reinvent the governance of Ottoman society. First, without the pillage income from continual conquest, revenues needed to be raised to pay the standing army. The responsibility for this fell to regional governors, who preyed upon local residents, severely undermining the authority of the state while creating a kind of aristocracy of privilege for themselves (and hence mediocrity). Second, the elite Janisseries - like the Praetorian guard of the Romans - realized the true extent of their power, and became corrupted and dangerous power brokers in Istanbul. Third, the command power of the Sultan, so useful in war, blocked the diffusion of power to a professional administrative caste, which remained under-developed into the 19th C. Effective pashas came and went, often strangled by the bowstring for failure, but they did not establish schools to train their successors. Fourth, the medieval mentality - an acceptance of fate that enabled Ottoman warriors to rush into battle with the fearlessness of religious true believers - gradually gave way to personal caution, as exemplified by the defensive behavior of its leaders. Fifth, the quality of the hereditary monarchic line declined after Suleyman the Magnificent, in large part because the Sultan's sons were more of less imprisoned in the Harem - a parallel universe of pleasure and bizarre political machination - rather than gaining experience as governors of provinces (as they had in the empire's early cneturies). Interestingly, none of the above issues became dead end problems in Europe, whose societies were evolving in some ways to explicitly to resolve them. Finally, the forces of nationalism created centrifugal forces that doomed the ancient mores that made such a vast, eclectic society possible, which I believe still stands as an example towards which we might strive in new ways in the current global society that is in formation.
This is one of those books that can fill the reader with wonder at the sweep of history and human possibility. It has turned my interest in Turkish history into an inspiration that will sustain me for the rest of my life. Recommended with the greatest enthusiasm. Indeed, contemporary Turkey remains one of the most important political experiments on the planet in our current crisis of civilization. It is astonishing that so few Americans understand this.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ottoman Legacy
Comment: "Lords of the Horizons" is not your typical history book. It reads more like historical fiction, which I find absolutely delightful. The book is not dry and drawn out, does not concentrate on agricultural effects on a local mayor along with grain prices fluctuations and does not attempt to bore you to sleep. In fact, "Lords of the Horizons" consists of history, historical trivia, historical anectodes, travel tips, and "a-ha!" bits of information on surrounding areas that you always wondered about (if you ever wondered about them.)
True, the novel is biased, the author is obviously enchanted with the Ottoman history and legacy, so if you want a truly scholastic, academic history of the Ottoman Empire, this is not a book for you. This is more of a synopsis of a Westerner's love for this area and its history, although a detailed one. Yes, Armenian genocide is left out, as the book concentrates mainly on the Ottoman Sultans and the janissaries, as well as the life in Constantinople (Istanbul). Even so, I found the book highly readable and informative, a good starting book for further research of the topic.
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Summary: History of Ottoman Empire
Comment: I enjoy what I call "historical" fiction. Reading the Janissary Tree peaked my interest in the period, so I am now reading the same author's History of the Ottoman Empire. Last year I read histories of both the Muslims and the Christian Reformation. The Ottomans were important to both periods, and this book fills in some of the gaps for me.
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