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Sunday Times Paperback of the Year 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 Europe's heart. In their breadth and versatility, the Ottoman
rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans'
remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire,
Marc David Baer traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian,
Islamic and Byzantine heritage; how they used both religious
toleration and conversion to integrate conquered peoples; and how,
in the nineteenth century, they embraced exclusivity, leading to
ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the dynasty's demise after the
First World War. Upending Western concepts of the Renaissance, the
Age of Exploration, the Reformation, this account challenges our
understandings of sexuality, orientalism and genocide. Radically
retelling their remarkable story, The Ottomans is a magisterial
portrait of a dynastic power, and the first to truly capture its
cross-fertilisation between East and West.
In Honored by the Glory of Islam Marc David Baer proposes a novel
approach to the historical record of Islamic conversions during the
Ottoman age and gathers fresh insights concerning the nature of
religious conversion itself. Rejecting any attempt to explain
Ottoman Islamization in terms of the converts' motives, Baer
instead concentrates on the proselytizers - in this case, none
other than the sultan himself. Mehmed IV (1648-87) is remembered as
an aloof ruler whose ineffectual governing led to the disastrous
siege of Vienna. Through an integrated reading of previously
unexamined Ottoman archival and literary texts, Baer reexamines
Mehmed IV's failings as a ruler by underscoring the sultan's zeal
for bringing converts to Islam. As an expression of his
rededication to Islam, Mehmed IV actively sought to establish his
reputation as a convert-maker, convincing or coercing Christian and
Jewish subjects to be "honored by the glory of Islam," and Muslim
subjects to turn to Islamic piety. Revising the conventional
portrayal of a ruler so distracted by his passion for hunting that
he neglected affairs of state, Baer shows that Mehmed IV saw his
religious involvement as central to his role as sultan. He traces
an ever-widening range of reform, conversion, and conquest
expanding outward from the heart of Mehmed IV's empire. This
account is the first to correlate the conversion of people and
space in the mature Ottoman Empire, to investigate conversion from
the perspective of changing Ottoman ideology, and to depict the
sultan as an interventionist convert maker. The resulting insights
promise to rework our understandings of the reign of a forgotten
ruler, a largely neglected period in Ottoman history, the changing
nature of Islam and its history in Europe, relations between
Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Europe, the practice of Jihad, and
religious architecture in urban history.
This book tells the story of the Donme, the descendents of Jews who
resided in the Ottoman Empire and converted to Islam along with
their messiah, Rabbi Shabbatai Tzevi, in the seventeenth century.
For two centuries following their conversion, the Donme were
accepted as Muslims, and by the end of the nineteenth century rose
to the top of Salonikan society. The Donme helped transform
Salonika into a cosmopolitan city, promoting the newest innovation
in trade and finance, urban reform, and modern education. They
eventually became the driving force behind the 1908 revolution that
led to the overthrow of the Ottoman sultan and the establishment of
a secular republic.
To their proponents, the Donme are enlightened secularists and
Turkish nationalists who fought against the dark forces of
superstition and religious obscurantism. To their opponents, they
were simply crypto-Jews engaged in a plot to dissolve the Islamic
empire. Both points of view assume the Donme were anti-religious,
whether couched as critique or praise.
But it is time that we take these religious people seriously on
their own terms. In the Ottoman Empire, the Donme promoted
morality, ethics, spirituality, and a syncretistic religion that
reflected their origins at the intersection of Jewish Kabbalah and
Islamic Sufism. This is the first book to tell their story, from
their origins to their near total dissolution as they became
secular Turks in the mid-twentieth century.
Hugo Marcus (1880-1966) was a man of many names and many
identities. Born a German Jew, he converted to Islam and took the
name Hamid, becoming one of the most prominent Muslims in Germany
prior to World War II. He was renamed Israel by the Nazis and sent
to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp before escaping to
Switzerland. He was a gay man who never called himself gay but
fought for homosexual rights and wrote queer fiction under the pen
name Hans Alienus during his decades of exile. In German, Jew,
Muslim, Gay, Marc David Baer uses Marcus's life and work to shed
new light on a striking range of subjects, including German Jewish
history and anti-Semitism, Islam in Europe, Muslim-Jewish
relations, and the history of the gay rights struggle. Baer
explores how Marcus created a unique synthesis of German, gay, and
Muslim identity that positioned Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as an
intellectual and spiritual model. Marcus's life offers a new
perspective on sexuality and on competing conceptions of gay
identity in the multilayered world of interwar and postwar Europe.
His unconventional story reveals new aspects of the interconnected
histories of Jewish and Muslim individuals and communities,
including Muslim responses to Nazism and Muslim experiences of the
Holocaust. An intellectual biography of an exceptional yet
little-known figure, German, Jew, Muslim, Gay illuminates the
complexities of twentieth-century Europe's religious, sexual, and
cultural politics.
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 Europe's heart. In their
breadth and versatility, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the
new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans' remarkable rise from a
frontier principality to a world empire, Marc David Baer traces
their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic and Byzantine
heritage; how they used both religious toleration and conversion to
integrate conquered peoples; and how, in the nineteenth century,
they embraced exclusivity, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide,
and the dynasty's demise after the First World War. Upending
Western concepts of the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration, the
Reformation, this account challenges our understandings of
sexuality, orientalism and genocide. Radically retelling their
remarkable story, The Ottomans is a magisterial portrait of a
dynastic power, and the first to truly capture its
cross-fertilisation between East and West.
This book tells the story of the Donme, the descendents of Jews who
resided in the Ottoman Empire and converted to Islam along with
their messiah, Rabbi Shabbatai Tzevi, in the seventeenth century.
For two centuries following their conversion, the Donme were
accepted as Muslims, and by the end of the nineteenth century rose
to the top of Salonikan society. The Donme helped transform
Salonika into a cosmopolitan city, promoting the newest innovation
in trade and finance, urban reform, and modern education. They
eventually became the driving force behind the 1908 revolution that
led to the overthrow of the Ottoman sultan and the establishment of
a secular republic.
To their proponents, the Donme are enlightened secularists and
Turkish nationalists who fought against the dark forces of
superstition and religious obscurantism. To their opponents, they
were simply crypto-Jews engaged in a plot to dissolve the Islamic
empire. Both points of view assume the Donme were anti-religious,
whether couched as critique or praise.
But it is time that we take these religious people seriously on
their own terms. In the Ottoman Empire, the Donme promoted
morality, ethics, spirituality, and a syncretistic religion that
reflected their origins at the intersection of Jewish Kabbalah and
Islamic Sufism. This is the first book to tell their story, from
their origins to their near total dissolution as they became
secular Turks in the mid-twentieth century.
Hugo Marcus (1880-1966) was a man of many names and many
identities. Born a German Jew, he converted to Islam and took the
name Hamid, becoming one of the most prominent Muslims in Germany
prior to World War II. He was renamed Israel by the Nazis and sent
to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp before escaping to
Switzerland. He was a gay man who never called himself gay but
fought for homosexual rights and wrote queer fiction under the pen
name Hans Alienus during his decades of exile. In German, Jew,
Muslim, Gay, Marc David Baer uses Marcus's life and work to shed
new light on a striking range of subjects, including German Jewish
history and anti-Semitism, Islam in Europe, Muslim-Jewish
relations, and the history of the gay rights struggle. Baer
explores how Marcus created a unique synthesis of German, gay, and
Muslim identity that positioned Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as an
intellectual and spiritual model. Marcus's life offers a new
perspective on sexuality and on competing conceptions of gay
identity in the multilayered world of interwar and postwar Europe.
His unconventional story reveals new aspects of the interconnected
histories of Jewish and Muslim individuals and communities,
including Muslim responses to Nazism and Muslim experiences of the
Holocaust. An intellectual biography of an exceptional yet
little-known figure, German, Jew, Muslim, Gay illuminates the
complexities of twentieth-century Europe's religious, sexual, and
cultural politics.
"Honored by the Glory of Islam is an important new source on the
study of conversion. Much of this most informative book deals with
the dual role of conversion and conquest in defining the
controversial reign of Sultan Mehmed IV. Baer's innovative reading
of Ottoman chronicles and his focus on the nuances of conversion
within one own's religion makes this text an invaluable
presentation of an exciting new area of research." --Ethel Wolper,
Associate Professor of History, University of New Hampshire
"Marc Baer offers an innovative interpretation of religious
conversion, especially conversion to Islam in the Ottoman age.
Lacking enough evidence to speculate on the motives of the
converts, he instead focuses on the agency of those who initiated
the conversion process - in this case no less than the sultan
himself. Baer focuses on the career of Sultan Mehmed IV (r.
1648-87), and on the people who came into direct contact with his
court. In this way he sheds important new light on a critical
period in the Ottoman Empire's long history. Baer also convincingly
revises the character of Mehmed IV as an inept ruler whose
incompetence led to the catastrophic siege of Vienna in 1683. This
original study will be of great interest not only to Ottoman
specialists, but to students of Islam and of religious conversion."
--R.M.Eaton, Professor of History, University of Arizona
Winner of the Albert Hourani Book Award of the Middle East Studies
Association of North America for the best book in Middle East
Studies (2008) and short-listed for the Best First Book in the
History of Religions by the American Academy of Religion (2009).
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