Exploring the relationship between fiction and nation formation in the Muslim world through 12 unique studies from Azerbaijan, Libya, Iran, Algeria, and Yemen, amongst others, this book shows how fiction reflects and relates the complex entanglements of nation, religion, and modernity in the process of political and cultural identity formation.

This volume brings together a fascinating set of essays dealing with intellectual developments in late Ottoman society. Under the impact of European expansionism and modernization, the Ottoman Empire underwent profound transformations.
Through the chapters the reader will make the acquaintance of outstanding personalities such as the Ottoman historian Ahmed Cevdet, the radical atheist Abdullah Cevdet, and the nationalist/socialist Ziya Gokalp; intellectual movements like the Westerners ("Garpcilar"), part of the larger Young Turk opposition; ideologies like Pan-Islamism, constitutionalism and liberalism; religious institutions like the state mufti; educational institutions like the "Mulkiye" (School of Public Administrations) and the Christian community schools and printing and publishing activities, including the women's magazine "Hanimlara mahsus gazette" (The Ladies' Own Gazette).

When the Ottomans commenced their modernizing reforms in the 1830s, they still ruled over a vast empire. In addition to today's Turkey, including Anatolia and Thrace, their power reached over Mesopotamia, North Africa, the Levant, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. The Sultanate was at the apex of a truly multi-ethnic society. Modernization not only brought market principles to the economy and more complex administrative controls as part of state power, but also new educational institutions as well as new ideologies. Thus new ideologies developed and nationalism emerged, which became a political reality when the Empire reached its end. This book compares the different intellectual atmospheres between the pre-republican and the republican periods and identifies the roots of republican authoritarianism in the intellectual heritage of the earlier period.