This study is intended to serve as a fresh look at one of the significant aspects of Ottoman history through a case study of the North-Central Anatolian district (kaza) of Amasya at the turn of the seventeenth century: the changes in the rural structure of Anatolia during a period of turbulence, generally known as the period of the Celali rebellions. The research is mainly based on quantitative data contained in two existing Ottoman tax registers of different types (one mufassal tahrir defteri and one detailed 'avariz defteri), dating respectively from 1576 and 1642. The study examines the situation in three related aspects, namely settlement patterns, population structure and the composition of society in rural Amasya. Through a comparative analysis of the two tax registers, it underlines the changes observed in these three fields between 1576 and 1642. The first point that emerges from the survey is that the settled rural population in the kaza of Amasya appears to have increased significantly (almost two fold) between the 1520s and 1576, and that there was a great number of landless peasant households in the villages, as well as unmarried males in 1576. Secondly, most of the villages seem to have been situated in the lowland plains at this date. Thirdly, rural society consisted overwhelmingly of peasants working on lands of varying sizes, over which they had the hereditary usufruct rights as tenants. Living usually in the country, a significant number of notables, most of whom had pre-Ottoman connections, and timariots together excercised their rights of taxation over the peasantry. By 1642, it appears that this picture had undergone major changes: both the number of inhabited villages and their tax-paying adult male populations in the kaza dropped drastically (by 38.70 and 78.67 % respectively). While some "new" villages appeared in different localities, the remaining villages had become half-deserted. Most of disappeared/deserted villages seem to have been the smaller ones which had possibly been located in lowlands. The number of recorded bachelors in the remaining villages in 1642 constituted less than 10 per cent of the 1576 figure. There also appeared a significant number of (about 7% of total rural population) migrant groups/individuals (biruniyan or "outsiders") in villages; furthermore, we find similar number of militarymen (askeris) settled in the villages, and engaging in agriculture on their farms (ciftliks). It becomes apparent that many peasants moved to these ciftliks, probably for security reasons, while many others who had previously fled from their lands, returned to find their lands occupied by these askeris. The situation of the revenue-holding notables and timariots of the region, on the other hand, seriously dete riorated during this period. From a detailed survey of the socio-political developments of the period in the region, mainly based on the records of outgoing imperial decrees (miihimmes) and the Sharia Court registers (sicils) of Amasya, it becomes clear that these significant changes in the rural structure and society of the kaza between 1576 and 1642 were primarily the result of an unprecedented level of human-made catastrophes that took place during the large-scale Celali depredation of the period, and that these were accompanied by frequent occurrences of natural disasters. Therefore, the changes in the rural structure and society of the kaza of Amasya that emerge from the comparative analysis of the two tax registers represent firstly, the extent of the ruin of the countryside, and secondly, the extent of the erosion of the tax base of the Ottoman government in the region during this turbulent period.

The aim of this thesis is to present for the first time in English the corpus of Turkish scholarly writing on the Great Seljuks and to assess the internal consistency of the individual conclusions. In the West, the Great Seljuks are studied in the context of medieval Persian or Arabic history in particular and Islamic history in general [Lambton, 1987; Morgan, 1994a; Frye, 1993; Kennedy, 1994; Hodgson, 1974; Lewis, 1993]. In Turkey, the perspective that has emerged is quite different. According to Turkish scholars, besides Biblical studies and missionary activity, from the 19th century colonialism and industrialization were the main driving forces behind the study of Islamdom. This was because Western powers had to learn the languages and religion of their subjects in order to administer them and for industrialists to sell their goods to them [Koprilli.i, 1940:xxviii-xxix]. The racially and religiously biased Eurocentric histories that resulted also prejudged the Turks' historical role as solely military and destructive, arguing that they had not made a single contribution that furthered civilization [Ibid. 149-50 & 1981 :23; also Berktay, 1983:14-5]. At the Sevres Peace Talks, a memorandum to the Turkish delegation clearly expressed this prejudice Qune 23, 1919). According to the Allies, the Turks had ravaged and destroyed the lands they had conquered in Christendom and in Islamdom, because it was not in their nature 'to develop in peace what they had won in war' [Berktay, 1992:138-9]. It is not surprising, therefore, that Atatiirk initiated the search for a historical identity outside the confines of Islamic history and the West's assertion concerning the superiority of Graeco-Roman culture [Avctoglu, 1979/1 :18-27; Afetinan, 1981 :194ff]. Having said that, the roots of modern Turkish historiography must be sought in the century before Ataturk founded the Society for the Study of Turkish History (April 15, 1931).

This thesis is a study of the ideology and 'mentality' of the Seljuqs of Rum 473-641/1081-1243. It focuses on this little-known branch of the Seljuqs, whose rule in Anatolia lasted considerably longer than the Great Seljuq state further east. This study uses the few available Rum Seljuq primary sources in Persian and Arabic, as well as contemporary oriental Christian chronicles; it also draws on the evidence of coins and monumental inscriptions, where possible. Chapter one discusses the background of the Great Seljuqs, how they came into the Islamic world, bringing with them their centuries-old nomadic lifestyle and modes of thinking. This Chapter also analyses the way in which these Turkish nomadic chiefs were presented as Muslim rulers by the Arabic and Persian religious scholars and bureaucrats who served them. Chapter two discusses how the earliest Seljuq leaders in Anatolia from 473-500/1081-1107 conformed to traditional patterns of nomadic rule, and the period of interregnum and transition (500-551/1107-1156) during which the Seljuqs in Anatolia were dominated by the rival Turkish Danishmendid principality. Chapter three shows how the Rum Seljuq principality in Anatolia was transformed by the beginning of the thirteenth century into the Rum Seljuq sultanate. In chapter four the discussion focuses on the apogee of the dynasty under the rule of Kay Kawfis I (608-616/1211-1220) and Kay Qubadh I (616-634/1220-1237) where it may be argued that these two Seljuq sultans could justifiably be viewed as model Perso-Islamic rulers, although elements from their Turkish nomadic past remained. The appendix contains an analysis of the crucial relationship between the Rum Seluqs and their Byzantine neighbours during the period (473-576/1081-1180), arguing that a pattern of friendly co-existence was established between the Seljuq sultans and the Comneni emperors during these years. The thesis shows how ideology rather than mere military success helped to shape this important dynasty into a fully-fledged sultanate.

In Lycia, Xanthos and its main sanctuary, the Letoon, have throughout centuries kept some very particular features which have survived intense cultural upheavals and influences both Persian and Greeks. The infrastructures and shape of the Letoon indicates that there is more to the sanctuary’s rituals and architecture than normalised Greek divinities and temples. Lycia, following the Persian invasion in the 540s, remained a remote region of the empire and benefited from an autonomous status. Nevertheless the outside contacts and cultural exchanges multiplied and intensified, especially with the Persian ruling class, but also with the Greeks who took an increasing part into the trade and artistic influence of Lycia. The most important city of the region, Xanthos was the focus of the Persian presence in Lycia but also at the spearhead of Hellenic influence in western Lycia. This underlying Greek presence became ever more pregnant under the rule of the last dynasts of Xanthos at the turn of the fourth century and under the rule of the Carian satraps under the power of whom Lycia was put in the 360s. The Hellenistic period only confirm the prior trend. To begin with, we are trying to define how the Persians had an impact on the Lycian culture and conclude that it was a great influential force but stayed somewhat limited to the higher classes of the Xanthian society. The parallel with the Greek influence is contrasting. The arrival of Greek trends was more insidious but also more widespread to the lower classes of society and lasted longer. We will conclude that none of those influences were imposed but rather chosen by the Xanthian society. We will continue by trying to understand how those cultural manifestations affected local religious beliefs. By exposing the successive evolutions of the Letoon and of the divinities residing here, we will see that the syncretic divinities of the Letoon kept a lot of their ancestral attributes and places of worship are keeping track with their sacred past. In this process we are trying to show that religion holds a peculiar place in a nation or a city’s culture. In this attempt we are concluding that religion is the most stable aspect of a local culture and is the recipient for the safeguard of a nation’s identity.

The main focus of this study is to examine the modernization of the Ottoman navy during the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz, exploring naval administration, education, and technology. Giving a summary of the transformation of shipbuilding technologies and bureaucratic institutions of the Ottoman naval forces between 1808 and 1861, it analyses the structure of the Ottoman navy, its level of development in comparison to previous periods of time, and the condition of the vessels making up the naval fleet from 1861 to 1876. It also intends to evaluate the character of existing administrative structures at the outset of Abdülaziz’s reign in 1861 and the nature of subsequent changes, including structural reorganization of the Imperial Naval Arsenal, the Ministry of Marine, and the Naval Academy, as well as advancements in military training and seafaring; all within the context of the impact of these changes on the military, political, and economic condition of the Empire during the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz.

The documentary evidence used in this dissertation has been drawn from the Ottoman court records and it is complemented by the data derıved from the fiscal registers. This dissertation adopted a case-study approach to allow a deeper insight into the complexities of the rural history of Ottoman Anatolia in the first half of the seventeenth century. These complexities are more related to the methodological approaches which are based on the adaptation of the purported theories about ‘the general crisis of the seventeenth century’ to Ottoman history. Such misinterpretations put the contention that a set of social, economic and ecological challenges associated with the Little Ice Age put a lot of serious strains on the Ottoman state and society during the seventeenth century. By adopting a critical approach to the arguments of such crisis-based theories that revolve around the Celali rebellions and the phenomenon of the Little Ice Age, this dissertation aims to show through the cases of Aintab, Urfa and Ankara that the countryside of Anatolia was more resilient to the so-called challenges than it seems. This dissertation examines the economic, demographic and ecological dynamics in rural Anatolia in the period following the Celali rebellions from a regional perspective that takes into consideration the local geographic and climatic characteristics. It focuses on a wide range of topics that include types of farming, rural settlement patterns, change in rural settlements, and agrarian and pastoral trends in the land use forms. It explores the pastoral and agricultural activities of the nomadic people with the aim of highlighting their constructive in the rural economies of Anatolia.

En partant de l’idée que la France a été pour les Turcs une terre de refuge, de découverte, d’apprentissage mais aussi d’inspiration, nous nous sommes interrogés pour chercher à déterminer à quoi ils ont pu s’initier et s’intéresser dans ce pays en fonction des différentes périodes. Il est établi qu’entre 1830-1856, la France était un pays de formation militaire pour les Ottomans. Par la suite, elle devient un modèle d’administration pour les réformateurs des Tanzimat, pendant que les exilés commencent à en faire une tribune de libre expression. Il semblerait donc suivant les périodes, que la France ait eu une résonance politique, artistique ou culturelle auprès des Turcs. Il se dessine, a priori, une première période (1880-1914) où la France se présente davantage comme un laboratoire politique. Durant la seconde période (1925-1980), la France semble davantage se profiler comme un terrain artistique grâce à la présence et à l’influence des écrivains et surtout des peintres. / Starting from the idea that France was for the Turks a land of refuge , discovery , learning and also inspiration, we asked to try to determine what they were able to initiate and s' interest in this country according to the different periods. It is established that between 1830-1856 , France was a country of military training for the Ottomans. Thereafter, it becomes a model for the administration of Tanzimat reformers , while the exiles began to make a forum for free expression. This suggests the following periods , as France has been a political, artistic or cultural resonance with the Turks . It draws a priori an initial period (1880-1914) when France is presented more as a political laboratory. During the second period (1925-1980) , France seems more itself as an artistic field due to the presence and influence of writers and especially painters.

Taking as its subject the Russo-Ottoman borderland during the period between the Treaty of Berlin (1878) and the start of the First World War (1914), and making extensive use of Ottoman archival documents covering this period, this thesis focuses on the ways in which the Ottoman state attempted to establish two types of boundary in order to ensure sovereignty over its territory. Firstly, there was a new geo-political border, the line dividing the Russian and Ottoman Empires at the juncture of north-eastern Anatolia and the southern Caucasus, created by the Treaty of Berlin. Secondly, there was what can be called a citizenship boundary, shaped by various laws and regulations defining the Ottoman citizenry. The main issues examined in respect of the first boundary are various types of human movement across this border and their control by the Ottoman state. Primary concerns regarding the second boundary revolve around the inclusion in and exclusion from the Ottoman citizenship of ethno-religious groups as a result of the Ottoman state's enforcement of the border. Our approach to studying how the citizenship boundary was established is two-fold, reflecting both local and state perspectives. The local perspective shows the actions of the inhabitants and travellers passing through this border region as shaped by their own day-to-day needs, livelihood patterns and pre-existing socio-economic relations; these resisted limitation by the logic of the sovereign state. The state perspective reflects the Ottoman view of Russia as the main threat to its border territories; this view led the Ottoman central authorities to perceive the entanglements and overlapping positions of its subjects in and with Russia as the cause of their ambiguous loyalties to the Ottoman state. In focusing on the specific policies and practices that the Ottoman state applied in order to deal with this ambiguity, two groups of people, Muslims and Armenians, are singled out. Notwithstanding the all-embracing state laws and discourse of legal equality, Ottoman border policy in respect of its Muslim subjects is shown to have differed greatly from that designed for its Armenian subjects. Therefore, the thesis offers a nuanced framework with which to understand Ottoman citizenship in the Russo-Ottoman border context, by revealing the normative and practical measures the Ottoman state employed to classify its Muslim and Armenian populations, thereby differentiating their status as subjects. This thesis - the first English-language work on the Russo-Ottoman border region during the late nineteenth century and pre-WWI period- offers a range of original insights into this borderland in particular and related issues more generally. It unfolds the details of everyday life and represents the local people as active agents - active, moreover, in relation both to the changing nature and effectiveness of the state's assertion of territorial authority and also to the differences between the two empires' policies and practices. Overall, the thesis focuses on the end-of-empire border politics and the issue of Ottoman citizenship not only from the perspective of macro-level political developments and central state power but also in terms of the peripheral specificities of administration and the movements and subjecthood choices of villagers. Thus, this thesis presents a new type of multi-faceted account of borderland development in which ethno-religious considerations came to inform a somewhat messy production of sovereignty in the context of the modernizing transition between empire and nation-state.

This thesis is a regional history of Lesbos and the adjacent regions of Troas and Aiolis in NW Turkey during Greco-Roman antiquity. This area represents a zone of transition between the Mediterranean and inland Asia Minor, and therefore provides us with a case study of how regions which lie at the margins or beyond the theoretical framework of Horden and Purcell's The Corrupting Sea (2000) function. Rather than defining the area of study simply in terms of physical geography, I instead argue that we can identify a region which I term the coastal interface that is characterized by the overlapping and intermingling dynamics of the maritime and terrestrial worlds. This zone of transition can extend out to sea to include nearby islands which are orientated towards the mainland, for example Lesbos in the case of my thesis, or equally it can stretch inland up river valleys or along other routes of communication to places which, although out of sight of the sea, were nevertheless profoundly influenced by their connection to the maritime world. The chapters of the thesis aim to demonstrate that the concept of the coastal interface can help illuminate the social and economic history of communities living within this region, with Chapters 1-3 focusing on the Troad and Chapters 4-7 looking at Lesbos. The subjects covered include Hellenistic Ilion and the koinon of Athena Ilias (Chapter 1), Theophrastos as a source for the social and economic history of the forests of Mt. Ida (Chapter 2), large-scale state-directed horse breeding in the middle Skamander valley (Chapter 3), Mytilene's peraia in coastal Anatolia from the seventh century down to 427 (Chapter 4), Mytilene's minting of billon and electrum coinage in the fifth century (Chapter 5), the refoundation of the Lesbian koinon in the early second century BC (Chapter 6), and the Aiolian aspect of Mytilenaian identity in the first centuries BC and AD (Chapter 7).

This dissertation examines the origins and development of ethno-national mobilisation amongst the Kurds of the Ottoman Empire in the decades leading up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It argues that, like other elements of Ottoman community, over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the idea that the Kurds constituted a 'nation' gradually proliferated amongst Kurdish intellectual and political leaders. This nascent 'national consciousness' found concrete expression in the establishment of a series of newspapers, journals and organisations claiming to represent the views and interests of the Ottoman Kurdish community. However, while a growing number of Kurds began to see themselves as part of a 'Kurdish nation', the political implications of Kurdish 'nationhood' remained controversial. Indeed, from its inception the Kurdish movement contained within it a number of factions which held very different opinions on what precisely constituted the Kurds' national interests. This included some who attempted to secure the advancement and development of their people within the framework of the empire (accommodationists) and others who sought national independence (separatists). This study seeks to highlight the diversity within the Kurdish movement and, more importantly, shed light on the reasons behind it. In doing so, it will become possible to create a more nuanced historical narrative of the origins and nature of the Kurdish question, a question which remained a major political issue facing Middle Eastern leaders and statesmen today.