The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs

ISBN: 1541673808

Author: Baer, Marc David

Condition: New

This major new history of the Ottoman dynasty reveals a diverse empire that straddled East and West.The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europes heart. Indeed, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire, historian Marc David Baer traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic, and Byzantine heritage. The Ottomans pioneered religious toleration even as they used religious conversion to integrate conquered peoples. But in the nineteenth century, they embraced exclusivity, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the empires demise after the First World War. The Ottomans vividly reveals the dynastys full history and its enduring impact on Europe and the world.