The Arab Lands in the Ottoman Era

This second volume in the series Minnesota Studies in Early Modern History brings together eleven original studies in the history of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. One of world history s largest, longest-lived, and most influential empires, the Ottoman Empire controlled the Balkans, Anatolia, and most of the Middle East throughout the early modern era. The studies collected here cover the entire period of Ottoman rule over the Arab lands, from the initial conquest in the early sixteenth century through the empire s collapse following World War I; their geographical scope is similarly broad, spanning a region from Yemen to Morocco. Exploiting a wide range of Ottoman central and provincial narrative and archival sources, as well as European diplomatic and travel accounts, the authors address a wide range of subjects in political, economic, social, religious, and even musical history. They focus not only on relations between the Arab provinces and the Ottoman central authority but also on social, religious, and ethno-regional diversity within individual provinces, and the experiences in Ottoman territory of subjects of other empires. The Introduction by Jane Hathaway, Professor of History at Ohio State University and author of The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule (Pearson/Longman, 2008), relates these essays to overall developments in Ottoman historiography while paying tribute to Professor Caesar Farah, who inspired many of these contributions