Paul Wittek’s The Rise of the Ottoman Empire was first published by the Royal Asiatic Society in 1938 and has been out of print for more than a quarter of a century. The present reissue of the text also brings together translations of some of his other studies on Ottoman history; eight closely interconnected writings on the period from the founding of the state to the Fall of Constantinople and the reign of Mehmed II. Most of these pieces reproduces the texts of lectures or conference papers delivered by Wittek between 1936 and 1938 when he was teaching at Université Libré in Brussels, Belgium. The books or journals in which they were originally published are for the most part inaccessible except in specialist libraries, in a period when Wittek's activities as an Ottoman historian, in particular his formulations regarding the origins and subsequent history of the Ottoman state (the "Ghazi thesis"), are coming under increasing study within the Anglo-Saxon world of scholarship. An introduction by Colin Heywood sets Wittek's work in its historical and historiographical context for the benefit of those students who were not privileged to experience it firsthand. This reissue and recontextualizing of Wittek’s pioneering work on early Ottoman history makes a valuable contribution to the field and to the historiography of Asian and Middle Eastern history generally.

The subject of this two-volume publication is an inventory of manuscripts in the book treasury of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, commissioned by the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II from his royal librarian ʿAtufi in the year 908 (1502–3) and transcribed in a clean copy in 909 (1503–4). This unicum inventory preserved in the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtára Keleti Gyűjtemény, MS Török F. 59) records over 5,000 volumes, and more than 7,000 titles, on virtually every branch of human erudition at the time. The Ottoman palace library housed an unmatched encyclopedic collection of learning and literature; hence, the publication of this unique inventory opens a larger conversation about Ottoman and Islamic intellectual/cultural history. The very creation of such a systematically ordered inventory of books raises broad questions about knowledge production and practices of collecting, readership, librarianship, and the arts of the book at the dawn of the sixteenth century. The first volume contains twenty-eight interpretative essays on this fascinating document, authored by a team of scholars from diverse disciplines, including Islamic and Ottoman history, history of science, arts of the book and codicology, agriculture, medicine, astrology, astronomy, occultism, mathematics, philosophy, theology, law, mysticism, political thought, ethics, literature (Arabic, Persian, Turkish/Turkic), philology, and epistolary. Following the first three essays by the editors on implications of the library inventory as a whole, the other essays focus on particular fields of knowledge under which books are catalogued in MS Török F. 59, each accompanied by annotated lists of entries. The second volume presents a transliteration of the Arabic manuscript, which also features an Ottoman Turkish preface on method, together with a reduced-scale facsimile.

Beginning on the eve of oceanic exploration, and the first European forays into the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, The Ottomans and the Mamluks traces the growth of the Ottoman Empire from a tiny Anatolian principality to a world power, and the relative decline of the Mamluks-historic defenders of Mecca and Medina and the rulers of Egypt and Syria. Cihan Yuksel Muslu traces the intertwined stories of these two dominant Sunni Muslim empires of the early modern world, setting out to question the view that Muslim rulers were historically concerned above all with the idea of Jihad against non-Muslim entities. Through analysis of the diplomatic anad military engagements around the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, Muslu traces the interactions of these Islamic super-powers and their attitudes towards the wider world. This is the first detailed study of one of the most important political and cultural relationships in early-modern Islamic history.

This book is the first survey of the figural arts of the Iranian world from prehistoric times to the early twentieth century ever to consider themes, rather than styles. Analyzing primarily painting - in manuscripts and albums, on walls and on lacquered, painted pen boxes and caskets - but also the related arts of sculpture, ceramics, and metalwork, the author finds that the underlying themes depicted on them through the ages are remarkably consistent. Eleanor Sims demonstrates that all these arts display similar concerns: kingship and legitimacy; the righteous exercise of princely power and the defense of national territory; and the performance of rituals and the religious duties called for by the paramount cult of the day. She describes a variety of superb works of art inside and outside these categories, noting not only how they illustrate archetypal themes but also what it is about them that is unique. She also discusses the ways that Iranian art both influenced and was influenced by invaders and neighboring lands. Boris I. Marshak discusses pre-Islamic and also Central Asian art, in particular the earliest Iranian wall paintings and their pictorial parallels in rock carvings and metalwork, and the richly painted temples and houses of Panjikent. Ernst J. Grube considers religious imagery, and provides an informative bibliography.

This is the first publication of the official correspondence of the leading religious scholar and literary figure, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abi al-Hasan al-Bakri al-Siddiqi al-Shafi'i Sibt Al al-Hasan. It provides a window into the world of an influential religious scholar in sixteenth century Cairo and his network of contacts in the Ottoman Empire and beyond. Muhammad al-Bakri corresponded with Sultan Murad III, the grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, and with various officials in Mecca, including the sharifian ruler of Mecca, al-Hasan ibn Abi Numayy. The collection also contains two letters addressed to Sa'di rulers of Morocco and one to the Mughal Emperor Akbar, as well as letters to a variety of lesser Ottoman officials. It is an important source for the history of Ottoman Egypt and the Hijaz.

In eighteenth-century Palestine, on the shores of Galilee's Lake Tiberias, visionary political and military leader Dahir al-Umar al-Zaydani undertakes a journey toward the greatest aim anyone could hope to achieve in his day: the establishment of an autonomous Arab state. To do so he must challenge the rule of the greatest power in the world at the time--the Ottoman Empire--while translating the ideals of human dignity, justice, and religious tolerance into concrete daily realities. In this compelling story of love and loss, victory and defeat, loyalty and betrayal, award-winning poet and novelist Ibrahim Nasrallah, author of the Arabic Booker shortlisted Time of White Horses, once again brings Palestinian history alive with a set of characters and events both real and imagined to capture the essence of a rich and dramatic epoch in the turbulent annals of a land that has been fought over for millennia.