In A History of Ottoman Political Thought up to the Early Nineteenth Century, Marinos Sariyannis offers a survey of Ottoman political literature, from its beginnings until the beginning of the Tanzimat reforms.

How the Ottomans refashioned and legitimated their rule through mystical imageries of authority The medieval theory of the caliphate, epitomized by the Abbasids (750–1258), was the construct of jurists who conceived it as a contractual leadership of the Muslim community in succession to the Prophet Muhammed’s political authority. In this book, Hüseyin Yılmaz traces how a new conception of the caliphate emerged under the Ottomans, who redefined the caliph as at once a ruler, a spiritual guide, and a lawmaker corresponding to the prophet’s three natures. Challenging conventional narratives that portray the Ottoman caliphate as a fading relic of medieval Islamic law, Yılmaz offers a novel interpretation of authority, sovereignty, and imperial ideology by examining how Ottoman political discourse led to the mystification of Muslim political ideals and redefined the caliphate. He illuminates how Ottoman Sufis reimagined the caliphate as a manifestation and extension of cosmic divine governance. The Ottoman Empire arose in Western Anatolia and the Balkans, where charismatic Sufi leaders were perceived to be God’s deputies on earth. Yılmaz traces how Ottoman rulers, in alliance with an increasingly powerful Sufi establishment, continuously refashioned and legitimated their rule through mystical imageries of authority, and how the caliphate itself reemerged as a moral paradigm that shaped early modern Muslim empires. A masterful work of scholarship, Caliphate Redefined is the first comprehensive study of premodern Ottoman political thought to offer an extensive analysis of a wealth of previously unstudied texts in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish.

Once hailed as 'the eternal state', the Ottoman Empire was in decline by the end of the nineteenth century, finally collapsing under the pressures of World War I. Yet its legacies are still apparent, and few have had more impact than those of its schools and educational policies. "Empire and Education under the Ottomans" analyses the Empire's educational politics from the mid-nineteenth century, amidst the Tanzimat reform period, until "The Young Turk Revolution in 1908". Through a focus on the regional impact of decrees from Istanbul, Emine O. Evered unravels the complexities of the era, demonstrating how educational changes devised to strengthen the Empire actually hastened its demise. This book is the first history of education in the Ottoman Middle East to evaluate policies in the context of local responses and resistance, and includes the first published English translation of the watershed 1869 Ottoman Education Law. A stimulating and impressively-researched study, it represents an important new addition to the historiography of the Ottoman Empire and will be essential for those researching its lasting legacy.

Like many other states, the 19th century was a period of coming to grips with the growing domination of the world by the 'Great Powers' for the Ottoman Empire. Many Muslim Ottoman elites attributed European 'ascendance' to the new sciences that had developed in Europe, and a long and multi-dimensional debate on the nature, benefits, and potential dangers of science ensued. This analysis of this debate is not based on assumptions characteristic of studies on modernisation and Westernisation, arguing that for Muslim Ottomans the debate on science was in essence a debate on the representatives of science.

The Eastern Question, as it was termed by the European Powers in the nineteenth century, was a debate primarily concerned with the issue of 'what to do with the Turk?'. The Ottoman Empire had become known as the 'sick man of Europe' following its gradual decline since the eighteenth century, and its demise would be highly problematic for the crowned heads of Europe. This unique book focuses on the intellectual and political dynamics of the first Ottoman political opposition in the modern sense, the so-called 'Young Ottomans'. In the process it narrates an alternative version of the Eastern Question as experienced and told by its Eastern observers and critics. Nazan A icek shows how an important section of the newly-rising semi-autonomous Ottoman Muslim Turkish intelligentsia in the second half of the nineteenth century, effectively answered the alternative question of 'what to do with the West?'.

Nineteenth-century Ottoman politics was filled with casual references to public opinion. Having been popularised as a term in the 1860s, the following decades witnessed a deluge of issues being brought into 'the tribune of public opinion'. Murat R. Şiviloğlu explains how this concept emerged, and how such an abstract phenomenon embedded itself so deeply into the political discourse that even sultans had to consider its power. Through looking at the bureaucratic and educational institutions of the time, this book offers an analysis of the society and culture of the Ottomans, as well as providing an interesting application of theoretical ideas concerning common political identity and public opinion. The result is a more balanced and nuanced understanding of public opinion as a whole.