The readings for this class will be a combination of books, articles and book chapters.
Students are advised to buy the following three books:
Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP.
Barkey, Karen. 2008. Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge & New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Students who wish to start reading before the semester starts, are advised to start with Dale’s The Muslims Empires, as this provides the best introduction to the topic.
Week 1 (21 January) Gunpowder Empires?
Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP. Pp. 1-9 (Introduction)
Casale, Giancarlo. “The Islamic Empires of the Early Modern World,” in The Cambridge World History, Volume VI: The Construction of a Global World, 1400-1800 4 CE, Part I: Foundations, Jerry H. Bentley, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 323-344.
Hodgson, Marshall G. S. “Prologue to Book Five” in The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. Vol. three: The Gunpowder Empires and Modern times. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. pp. 3-15.
Robert D. McChesney, “Central Asia’s Place in the Middle East: Some Historical Considerations,” in Central Asia Meets the Middle East, ed. David Menashri (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 25–51.
70 pages
Week 2 (28 January) Turko-Persia
Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP. pp. 10-76 (Chapter 1: India, Iran, and Anatolia from the tenth to the sixteenth century. And Chapter 2: The Rise of Muslim Empires.)
Canfield, Robert. 1991. “Introduction. The Turko-Persian Tradition.” in Canfield, R. L. (ed.) “Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-34. available online: http://assets.cambridge.org/97805213/90941/sample/9780521390941ws.pdf
Julie Meisami Medieval Persian Court Poetry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, i-xiii (prologue).
114 pages
Week 3 (4 February) Nomads and Sedentaries
Neumann and Wigen: The Eurasian Steppe Tradition, Chapter 3: The Steppe Tradition Settles Down (50 pages)
Barfield, T. J. (2002). Turk, Persian, and Arab: Changing Relationships Between Tribes and State in Iran and along Its Frontiers. In N. R. Keddie and R. Mathee, eds., Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics. London and Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
Approx 80 pages.
Week 4 (11 February) International Relations before European Hegemony
Andrew Philips and J.C. Sharman (2015) International Order in Diversity: War, Trade and Rule in the Indian Ocean. Cambridge: CUP, 51-165.
Windler, Christian. 2001. "Diplomatic History as a Field for Cultural Analysis: Muslim-Christian Relations in Tunis, 1700-1840." The Historical Journal 44 (1): 79-106.
88 pages
Week 5 (18 February): Imperial Organisation (Joakim)
Barkey, Karen. 2008. Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge & New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1-108.
108 pages
Submission of first reflection papers: Barfield 2002.
Week 6 (25 February) Royal Legitimacy and Imperial Institutions
Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP. pp. 77-134.
Dressler, Marcus. 2005. “Inventing orthodoxy: Competing claims for authority and legitimacy in the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict." Legitimizing the Order
Week 7 (4 March) Courtly Cultures
Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP. pp. 135-176 (Chapter 5: Imperial Cultures)
Walter Andrews, Mehmet Kalpaklı The Age of Beloveds, 1-31.
Sharma, Sunil. 2017. Mughal Arcadia. Persian Literature in an Indian Court. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1-88.
Week 8 (11 March) Golden Age?
Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP. pp. 177-207 (Chapter 6: Golden Ages: Profane and Sacred Empires)
Kafadar, Cemal. 1993. “The Myth of the Golden Age. Ottoman Historical Consciousness in the Post Süleymânic Era.” In Halil İnalcık and Cemal Kafadar. Süleymân The Second and His Time. Istanbul: Isis Press, 37-48.
Online: https://archive.org/details/SULEYMAN2
Week 9 (18 March) Imperial Refinement
Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP. pp. 208-246 (Chapter 7: Imperial Culture in the Golden Age)
Kinra, Rajeev. 2015. Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1-59.
Week 10 (25 March) Art and Power (seminar; Joakim?)
Necipoğlu, Gülrü. 1993. “Framing the Gaze in Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Palaces” Ars Orientalis 23, Pre-Modern Islamic Palaces pp. 303-342
Monica Juneja “Circulation and beyond – the trajectories of vision in early modern Eurasia” in: Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann (ed): Circulations in the Global History of Art, London: Ashgate, 2015, pp. 59-78.
Koch, Ebba. "The Mughal Emperor as Solomon, Majnun, and Orpheus, or the Album as a Think Tank for Allegory." Muqarnas 27 (2010): 277-311.
Week 11 (1 April) Sufism, Mysticism, Millennarianism (seminar)
A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. 16-106.
Ayse Baltacioglu-Brammer “The Emergence of the Safavids as a Mystical Order and Their Subsequent Rise to Power in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries.” In The Safavids, ed. Rudi Matthee. London: Routledge, 2016.
Fleischer, Cornell H. 1983. "Royal Authority, Dynastic Cyclism, and ‘Ibn Khaldunism’ in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Letters." Journal of Asian and African Studies 18 (3-4): 198-220.
Week 12 (8 April) Religious Legitimacy
Guy Burak, “The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Post-Mongol Context of the Ottoman Adoption of a School of Law,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 3 (2013): 579–602.
A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. 107-253.
Submission of the second reflection paper: Fleischer 1983.
Week 13 (15 April) Easter break
Week 14 (22 April) Easter break
Week 15 (29 April) Tolerance, Syncretism and Confessionalisation (Joakim)
Barkey, Karen. 2008. Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge & New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 109-191.
Baltacıoğlu-Brammer, Ayşe. 2014. “Formation of Kızılbaş Communities in Anatolia and Ottoman Responses, 1450s-1630s” International Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol. 20, Nos. 1&2, 2014, pp. 21-48.
110 pages
Week 16 (6 May) Changing Trade Routes (Joakim)
Mathee, Rudolph. The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730. Cambridge, CUP, 1-118.
Suraiya Faroqhi, “Trade Between the Ottomans and Safavids: The Acem Tüccari and others,” in Iran and the World in the Safavid Age, edited by Edmund Herzig and Willem Floor (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 237-253
John F. Richards, “The Economy, Societal Change, and International Trade,” in John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 185-204
Week 17 (13 May) Multiple Modernities? (Joakim; seminar)
Tezcan, Baki. 2010. The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp 1-13, 191-243.
Ze'evi, Dror. 2004. "Back to Napoleon? Thoughts on the Beginning of the Modern Era in the Middle East." Mediterranean Historical Review 19 (1): 73-94.
Francis Robinson, “Ottomans–Safavids–Mughals: Shared Knowledge and Connective Systems,” Journal of Islamic Studies 8 (1997) 151–184.