Ottoman Empire
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Islamicate Civilisation is a Supreme Culture: But Who Stands to Inherit It?
The post argues that Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal high culture is a supreme achievement, yet Islamicate civilisation has no custodian state among some sixty Muslim-majority countries, unlike the West, China…
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Empire of Incorporation versus Empire of Extraction
X.T.M distinguishes empires of incorporation, such as the Chinese, Ottoman and Mughal, from commercial empires of extraction such as the French, English and Dutch, citing the contrast between Mughal-era scarcity…
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Ertugrul is badass
A short reaction to Diriliş: Ertuğrul: good for what it intends, a dramatic rendering of Ottoman origin myth despite a comic-book hero, and a question about what the Indian equivalent…
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An early modern Pax Islamica
Reviewing The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals, the author praises its short comparative frame, noting that the three dynasties differed in religious basis: Ottoman ghazis, the Safavid…
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Religious change, genocide, and culture in the Indian subcontinent and Eurasia
Razib Khan argues that ‘genocide’ carries modern, mass-politics connotations that do not map neatly onto premodern ethnic and religious turnover, where death was often a side-effect, and says readers should…
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Ordered to Die; A History of the Ottoman Army in WWI
A quick review by Major Amin of Edward Erickson’s Ordered to Die, which he calls a must-read. He accepts its view that the Ottomans lacked the logistics for the war…
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The Decline (and Attempted Rise) of the Sunnis in the Middle East
The author discusses Martin Kramer’s essay on the decline and attempted revival of Sunni power in the Middle East since the Ottomans, arguing that Islamists will recognise this story, and…
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Orlando. Stochastically predictable?
After the Orlando attack, the author argues that classical shariah-based Islam endorses violence against gays, yet practical tolerance of homosexuality in the Islamicate world was long very high, so a…
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Farewell Sykes-Picot. You will be much missed..
The author argues it is overstated that Sykes-Picot created the modern Middle East’s troubles, since Arab states never built convincing narratives for their own existence, and asks which of several…
