"Southeast Asia has long been connected by trade, religion and political links to the wider world across the Indian Ocean, and especially to the Middle East through the faith of Islam. However, little attention has been paid to the ties between Muslim Southeast Asia - encompassing the modern nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and the southern parts of Thailand and the Philippines - and the greatest Middle Eastern power, the Ottoman empire. The first direct political contact took place in the 16th century, when Ottoman records confirm that gunners and gunsmiths were sent to Aceh in Sumatra to help fight against the Portuguese domination of the pepper trade. In the intervening centuries, the main conduit for contact between was the annual Hajj pilgrimage, and many Malay pilgrims from Southeast Asia spent long periods of study in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which were under Ottoman control from 1517 until the early 20th century. During the period of European colonial expansion in the 19th century, once again Malay states turned to Istanbul for help. It now appears that these demands for intervention from Southeast Asia may even have played an important role in the development of the Ottoman policy of Pan-Islamism, positioning the Ottoman emperor as Caliph and leader of Muslims worldwide and promoting Muslim solidarity. The papers in this volume represent the first attempt to bring together research on all aspects of the relationship between the Ottoman world and Southeast Asia - political, economic, religious and intellectual - much of it based on documents newly discovered in archives in Istanbul"--Provided by publisher.

A new understanding of the transformation of Anatolia to a Muslim society in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries based on previously unpublished sources.

Ottoman-Southeast Asian Relations: Sources from the Ottoman Archives, is a product of meticulous study of İsmail Hakkı Kadı, A.C.S. Peacock and other contributors on historical documents from the Ottoman archives. The work contains documents in Ottoman-Turkish, Malay, Arabic, French, English, Tausug, Burmese and Thai languages, each introduced by an expert in the language and history of the related country. The work contains documents hitherto unknown to historians as well as others that have been unearthed before but remained confined to the use of limited scholars who had access to the Ottoman archives. The resources published in this study show that the Ottoman Empire was an active actor within the context of Southeast Asian experience with Western colonialism. The fact that the extensive literature on this experience made limited use of Ottoman source materials indicates the crucial importance of this publication for future innovative research in the field. Contributors are: Giancarlo Casale, Annabel Teh Gallop, Rıfat Günalan, Patricia Herbert, Jana Igunma, Midori Kawashima, Abraham Sakili and Michael Talbot

Aceh has become best known in our times for its twin disasters—the worst earthquake and tsunami of modern times in December 2004, and a long-running separatist conflict that rent Indonesia for most of its independent history. Although this book emerged from the process of recovery from those traumas, it turns the spotlight on a more positive and neglected claim Aceh has on our attention, as the Southeast Asian maritime state that most successfully and creatively maintained its independent place in the world until 1874. Like Burma, Siam and Vietnam, all better protected by geography, Aceh has its own story to tell of a unique culture struggling for survival through the European colonial era. Unfortunately the sources for this story are scattered, since Aceh’s own records have not well survived the ravages of climate, civil war and eventual foreign conquest. To recover its cosmopolitan history an unparalleled range of sources and skills had to be brought together. Aceh’s central role in the creation of Malay literature out of Arabic, Persian, Indian and Indonesian elements had to be explored with reference to texts surviving in a dozen world libraries (Teuku Iskandar, Amirul Hadi). The rich archeological record, neglected through the long years of conflict, had again to be brought into play (Daniel Perret), and the extensive relations of the Aceh sultanate with the Ottoman Empire (Ismail Göksoy and Ismail Kadı, Andrew Peacock & Annabel Gallop), Portugal (Jorge Alves), England (Annabel Gallop), and the Netherlands (Sher Banu and Jean Taylor) had to be explored, chiefly in European archives by experts in these respective fields. The result of this combined work in this volume is the most comprehensive picture so far of sources for the history of Aceh.

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.

No figure has had a more global impact than Alexander the Great, whose legends have encircled the globe and been translated into a dizzying multitude of languages, from Indo-European and Semitic to Turkic and Austronesian. Alexander the Great from Britain to Southeast Asia examines parallel traditions of the Alexander Romance in Britain and Southeast Asia, demonstrating how rival Alexanders - one Christian, the other Islamic - became central figures in their respective literatures. In the early modern age of exploration, both Britain and Southeast Asia turned to literary imitations of Alexander to imagine their own empires and international relations, defining themselves as peripheries against the Ottoman Empire's imperial center: this shared classical inheritance became part of an intensifying cross-cultural engagement in the encounter between the two, allowing a revealing examination of their cultural convergences and imperial rivalries and a remapping of the global literary networks of the early modern world. Rather than absolute alterity or strangeness, the narrative of these parallel traditions is one of contact - familiarity and proximity, unexpected affinity and intimate strangers.

One of the most powerful dynasties to rule in the medieval Middle East, the Seljuks played a critical role in the development of Anatolia's multi-ethnic, multi-confessional identity. Under Seljuk rule (c. 1081-1308) the formerly Christian Byzantine territories of Anatolia were transformed by the development of Muslim culture, society and politics, and it was then – well before the arrival of the Ottomans – that a Turkish population became firmly established in these lands. But these developments are little understood, and the Seljuk dynasty remains little studied. Yet the Seljuks of Anatolia were one of the most influential dynasties of the thirteenth-century Middle East, controlling some of the major trade routes of the period, playing a crucial role in linking East and West of the medieval world. Here, Andrew Peacock and Sara Nur Yildiz explore the history of Anatolia under Seljuk rule in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, examining developments in culture, politics, religion and society and shedding new light on the influence of the dynasty within Anatolia and throughout Western Asia. The Seljuks of Anatolia examines the crucial aspect of the Seljuk dynastic identity, and how this related to their royal households, and to the material and literary arts they sought to influence and promote through patronage. It also demonstrates how the Seljuks played a critical role in the development of Islamic culture in Anatolia, with strong influences from Iran, Syria and further afield. By taking this critical role into account, this book offers an analysis of the religious transformations that occurred during this period, from the Byzantine and Christian identities that prevailed amongst the Seljuks to the Sufis that held key positions in the Seljuk court. With its lively discussion of Seljuk identity, politics and culture, The Seljuks of Anatolia will be of great interest to researchers with interests in Byzantium as well as the material culture and society of the medieval Islamic world.