Dreams of Empire: A History of the Ottomans

A new, comprehensive history of the Ottoman Empire from its beginnings in 1300 to its dissolution in 1922 written by North America's leading expert in the field. The Ottoman Empire was one of the mightiest empires in world history, ruling parts of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa for more than six hundred years.At its height in the sixteenth century, it was more formidable militarily, better financed, more highly centralized, and more efficiently ruled than any rival power.For centuries, the sultans who governed it were the most powerful and prestigious "defenders of Islam." At the same time, this Islamic empire accommodated religious diversity in a way Europe's Christian powers would not.Encompassing politics and war, economics and society, culture and religion, Dreams of Empire shows how across the centuries, the Ottoman state evolved from a ministate in the northwest corner of Anatolia (the Asian part of today's Turkish republic) to a world empire sovereign over lan