At the intersection of religion, law, and the state lies the opportunity to explore the impact of the state on the legal order. This study investigates such an impact through an examination of authoritative Hanafi legal works from the 16th - 19th centuries CE, casting new light on the understudied late Hanafi jurists (al-muta'akhkhirun) in the early modern period. This dissertation argues that jurists secure the authority of the late Hanafi school (madhhab) through engagement with legal texts from previous generations of Hanafis, disclosure of the reasoning that underlies late Hanafi legal opinions, and invocation of principles, authorities, and juridical formulas that construct late Hanafism in the early modern period in particular ways. I demonstrate how late Hanafi jurists develop their own identities, opinions, and consensus in relation to earlier Hanafi opinions. For late Hanafis, the past authorities, texts, and opinions were never irrelevant: the past constituted a point of reference and continuity for their scholarship. The division of Hanafis into late and early is not simply a matter of time, although it is true that the late Hanafis produce legal works chronologically later than the early Hanafis did. The distinction is more important for identifying that there is a tradition which characterizes the group of scholars identified as being chronologically "late" that develops in the Mamluk and Ottoman periods. By taking the madhhab and its juristic discourse as the central focus, this study demonstrates how late Hanafi jurists assign probative value and authority to Ottoman state orders and edicts. This is reflected in the state's ability to settle juristic disputes, to order specific opinions to be adopted in fatawa, and to establish its orders as authoritative and final reference points. The incorporation of state orders within authoritative Hanafi legal commentaries, treatises, and fatawa collections is made possible by a turn in Hanafi legal culture that embraced the indispensible nature of the state in the law-making process. Current scholarship in the field of Ottoman Studies that focuses on "structural" interventions by the state (appointing muftis and judges, developing an Ottoman learned hierarchy) does not fully capture the influence of the state on the substance of the legal discourse. This project explores late Hanafi responses to Ottoman state interventions in the process of law-making, and the ways in which late Hanafi jurists talk to and about political power. The dissertation concludes by offering two proposals. The first is that late Hanafi legal scholarship in the early modern period secures a limited space for the political authority in the process of law-making. This proposal finds that the argument for the epistemic divorce between the domain of Islamic law and the authority of the state in current Islamic Studies scholarship is untenable. The second proposal is that the late articulation of the Hanafi legal tradition is not only integral to understanding modern movements to codify Islamic jurisprudence, and the role of the state in these transformations, but also to tracing many legal norms that were incorporated in modern civil codes in majority Muslim countries. By introducing "late Hanafism" as a category of analysis, and situating the madhhab as the locus of the investigation, this dissertation fills in a gap in the fields of Islamic legal studies and Ottoman studies. This study draws the focus from Ottoman court archives to the Hanafi juristic discourse itself for understanding how Islamic law was developed and applied, offering a new perspective on the internal legal discourse of late Hanafis and their responses to state power.

The present dissertation seeks to present and analyze the hitherto poorly understood first encounter between the Ottoman Empire and the Tsardom of Muscovy in the North Caucasus from the Muscovites’ annexation of the nearby Khanate of Astrakhan in 1556 and subsequent penetration into this region, to their expulsion from it by the Ottomans in 1605. The study relies on both Ottoman and Muscovite sources, both documentary and narrative, as well as archival and published. The main archival documentary sources are the Ottoman mühimme defters (registers of orders issued by the Imperial Council [Divan-i Hümayun]) and the Muscovite posol’skie knigi (registers of diplomatic documentation, including ambassadorial reports, diplomatic correspondence, and other documents administered by the Ambassadorial Office [Posol’skii Prikaz]). The main narrative sources are sixteenth-century Ottoman and Muscovite chronicles. On the basis of the Ottoman and Muscovite documentary sources it is possible to determine what Ottoman and Muscovite policies in the North Caucasus were, to what degree they were well-formulated, and how they evolved during the aforementioned time period. It becomes clear that Ottoman and Muscovite policies in the Pontic-Caspian steppes and specifically in the North Caucasus had some superficial similarities, but were in essence fundamentally different. Taking into account that it was only after Muscovy’s expansion into the North Caucasus that the Ottomans decided to take an active stand in the north, the dissertation also shows the ways in which Muscovite steppe policy not only affected the political structures on the frontiers but also influenced Ottoman northern policy, and specifically in the North Caucasus. However, this dissertation is not solely a study of an imperial rivalry in a contested frontier zone. The Ottoman and Muscovite involvement brought about changes to the internal dynamics of the polities within the North Caucasus. Lastly, during the first round of this imperial clash, Ottoman and Muscovite presence and sway in the North Caucasus underwent several extreme and unexpected shifts. These shifts and resulting new strategies that the Ottomans and Muscovites had to develop in the North Caucasus played an important role in their future encounters in the northern Black Sea region.

The main premise of this thesis is to demonstrate how the Gypsies, (Roma)---both Muslim and Christian, both settled and nomadic---were marginalized by the Ottoman State and society in Rumelia (Rumili) and Istanbul during the "Classical Age" of this tri-continental Islamic Empire. / The Ottoman state and the society's attitudes towards this marginal group are analyzed through the examination of the Muhimme Registers of the second half the sixteenth century and four major Kanunnames concerning the Gypsies issued in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Travelers' accounts and Turkish oral traditions have also been used to explore the social status of the Gypsies in Ottoman society, as well as their image in Ottoman popular culture. / The history of people who were marginal and voiceless in their societies is not just important for its own sake but for what it reveals about the nature of the societies in which they lived. Thus, this present work not only sheds light upon the history of the Gypsies but also attempts to open new grounds for further discussions on the functioning of the "Plural Society" of the Ottoman Empire.

Idris Bidlisi's Heşt Behişt is a history of the Ottoman empire written in Persian at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Although considered one of the most important historical works of its time, the work remains to date unedited and scarcely studied. The present work aims to make at least a part of Heşt Behişt available to modern scholarship, with particular focus on the times of the author's patron, the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II (1481-1512). The summarised translation (chapter Vll) of the eighth 'Book' of Heşt Behişt, devoted to Bayezid II's reign, provides the basis for further discussions on several issues relating to the period, including an investigation of the author's personal approach to his subject. The thesis begins with an outline of the historical background of the reign of Bayezid II (chapter I), followed by a brief account of the development of Ottoman historiography up to the appearance of Heşt Behişt (chapter II). The author, Idris Bidlisi, and Heşt Behişt itself are then introduced (chapters Ill and IV). The focus is subsequently turned to the reign of Bayezid II, with particular attention to two major issues of the period. The first relates to the civil strife between the new sultan and his brother Cem over succession to the throne, a series of events which marked the first two years of Bayezid II's reign and had a significant effect on the Ottoman empire's domestic and international politics for the next thirteen years until Cem's death in 1495 (chapter V). The second analytical chapter investigates the phenomenon of the Ottoman navy in the times of Bayezid II, under whose care the empire's naval forces were significantly expanded and upgraded, for the first time in Ottoman history achieving predominance in sea over their Christian counterparts (chapter VI). In the study of both these themes information and the results of modern scholarship are juxtaposed to the material found in Heşt Behişt, in an attempt to look into the historical knowledge of the period and disclose the chronicle's usefulness and contribution to modem research.

My study covers the period from the initial establishment of English representation at the Ottoman Porte with the capitulations of 1580 which established trading and diplomatic rights for English merchants, and the formal establishment of an embassy in 1583. I explore the development of the English embassy at Constantinople from its vulnerable first years through its growth in prestige during the 1620s and 1630s, to the zenith of its influence in the 1660s before the French began to dominate diplomatic business at the Porte. I examine English policy at the Porte from its first tentative attempts to secure a strategic alliance against the Spanish with the Ottomans in the Mediterranean, through the Thirty Years War in which both Ottoman and English authorities found themselves reluctantly embroiled and the domestic troubles which both suffered in the 1640s, culminating with the execution of Ibrahim I in 1648 and Charles I in 1649. I conclude with the period of stabilization in the 1650s when the English authorities reasserted coherent policies at home and abroad during the Protectorate and the Restoration. This was mirrored by a stabilisation of the Ottoman Empire after the first of the Köprülü Grand Viziers took the reins of power in 1656 and reasserted central control over the provinces and over Ottoman vassals on the peripheries of Ottoman territory. The thesis builds on work done on the English commercial expansion in the Levant and the commercial role of the embassy in the Constantinople. I seek to complement existing studies of particular embassies and personalities and to give a broader over-view of the development of Anglo-Ottoman diplomatic relations. I intend to open debate on the development of Ottoman foreign policy and the implementation of Ottoman diplomacy during the seventeenth century well before the Ottoman bureaucracy underwent the westernization which led to it being absorbed into the European diplomatic system during the late eighteenth century. In the introductory chapters I explore the development of diplomacy during this period to establish the different attitudes of the English governments who conducted a largely adhoc diplomacy until the late sixteenth century when they began to open a few key residences abroad, and the Ottoman authorities who maintained a strictly non-reciprocal form of policy with western nations which lay outside the Dar al-Islam or Muslim lands. I discuss the question of the duality of the embassy at Constantinople as both a commercial agency and a state department and examine the potential for conflict between the controlling interests of the Crown and the Levant Company. In two chapters on the domestic situations in England and the Ottoman Empire I assess the priorities of policy and the domestic and financial constraints on an active foreign policy. Both the Ottoman Empire and the English sought to secure their own state through internal stability and external alliances. Both states faced the same problems of hostility from their neighbours, internal rebellion and the need to provide for growing government expenditure. However, England and the Ottoman Empire differed in the way they approached their problems and had different resources to help them carry their policies through. The most notable contrast was that the Ottomans possessed a growing standing army while England relied on ad hoc levies until Cromwell's new model army. These chapters are intended to open the subject to two audiences: the Ottomanist and the Early Modern European/English Historian, and to place the Anglo-Ottoman relationship within a broader diplomatic context. I have divided the thesis into three parts, each exploring a different aspect of diplomatic relations between Whitehall and the Porte, centring on the role of the embassy at Constantinople. The opening of direct diplomatic relations with the Porte was the first sustained diplomatic contact the English had established with a non-Christian nation and formed the model for later diplomatic contacts with non-European nations. As a whole, my study contributes to an understanding of how England adapted to the non-reciprocal diplomacy of the Ottoman Porte and to the operation of diplomacy by a Christian nation in a non-Christian state. I also explore the development of English policy in the Mediterranean and place the Anglo-Ottoman diplomatic relationship in its European context. In part one I examine the function of the etiquette system at the Ottoman Porte and assess the importance of protocol conventions and the extent to which they affected the status of the ambassador and the progress of negotiations. I explore the status of western ambassadors within the Ottoman system and illustrate the adaptability and sophistication of the Forte's ceremonial system. I address the problem of the Forte's attitude to western states, recognising that there was ambiguity over whether such states were treated as representatives of tributary states or as honoured guests. I also explore the role which gift-giving, both official and unofficial, played in assessments of status and the complicated issue of diplomatic precedent, where western ambassadors attempted to assert their own concepts of status on the Ottoman system. In a further chapter I demonstrate how the English ambassador fitted into the English Court system and contrast English diplomatic ceremonial with that of the Porte. I provide an outline of the development of the conflict between the Crown, which endorsed the ambassador, and the Levant Company, which paid for him, to resolve the question of whether the embassy in Constantinople was indeed an embassy in the true sense. In this chapter I also explore the position of the few quasi-official Ottoman representatives who attended the English Court despite the official non-reciprocal diplomatic stance of the Porte. I examine the ceremonial which was provided for them and illustrate how the English system adapted to deal with this new phenomenon. This first part does not stand in isolation from the sections dealing with actual negotiations at the Porte but I intend it to place the diplomatic representatives in the framework in which they operated and establish the principles of status through which they proceeded to negotiations. In part two I consider the development of the administrative structure of the embassy in Constantinople. I include an assessment of both English and local staff, and attempt to resolve questions of the experience and efficiency of administrative personnel and of the ambassadors whom they served. I also explore the function of the embassy and establish the chains of command and channels of communication which the embassy involves. I explore the development of chancery practice during this period and give an outline of the Ottoman petition system through which all negotiations were initiated. I confront the problem of prompt authorization of documents and examine the use of a possible 'deputed Great Seal' by the embassy. The roles of Ottoman officials, especially the role of the Grand Vizier and the developing role of the Reisūlkūttab (Chief Scribe to the Divan) in foreign affairs are also discussed. Finally, in this section I consider the problems of security and communications within the region and examines the importance of the English consular network. The purpose of this section is to build up a picture of the operation of the embassy on a day to day basis to from a background to the various negotiations discussed in the final section. The final section forms the bulk of the thesis where I assess policy development in Anglo-Ottoman diplomatic relations. In the chapters of this section I explore the various types of negotiations conducted at the Porte by English ambassadors.

The proposed thesis deals with Beirut's urban development from a maritime town to a provincial capital in the 19. and early 20. centuries. It does so in the context of physical, politico-administrative and socio-cultural inscriptions on the city by a centralizing Ottoman state. The center-periphery relations in the Ottoman Empire are examined in terms of the forces of political integration and social cohesion as well as challenges to them. The empire-city nexus that is maintained throughout this thesis posits Beirut both as the site of Ottoman imperial discourses and practices and as the site of local appropriation of- and resistance to - them. Local power was articulated in arenas of negotiation between Istanbul and Beirut (e.g. municipal councils, bureaucratic and personal networks, production of space, practices of urban management). At the same time, the quality of the city's growth and wealth created discontent and resistance among these sectors of society that were excluded from, or threatened by, Beirut's development as a port city and provincial capital (e.g. strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, riots). The condition of Beirut at the turn of the century was commented and reflected upon in contemporary Arabic journal editorials, newspaper articles, poems and speeches whose transformative power, it will be argued, affected the very physical form of Beirut's urban fabric.

Starting from the final decades of the sixteenth century, Ottoman intellectuals were deeply concerned with what they perceived to be the decline of their traditional order. This decline consciousness, which later crystallized into a reform literature, is reflected in the works of this period's major historians. / Chapter I surveys the development of Ottoman historiography prior to the late sixteenth century, with the aim of highlighting the novelty of the critical perspectives developed by historians of the era like Ali, Lokman and Selaniki. The attitudes and analyses of these historians concerning disturbing economic processes such as monetary turbulence and price movements constitute the focus of Chapters II and III respectively. These chapters argue that Ottoman decline consciousness grew partly in response to a keen awareness of newly emerging social and economic forces that Ottoman reform literature chose not to understand and accomodate but to resist and suppress. The failure of Ottoman intellectuals to come to terms with the new market forces of the early modern world was not due to an anti-mercantile bias, but to the primacy of politics in the Ottoman order. Chapter IV traces the international commercial activities of Ottoman Muslims in the context of a comparison between Ottoman decline consciousness and European mercantilism.

This study is an attempt to challenge the conventional decline-irrationality literature in the Ottoman historiography. Conventional view presented a way of thinking that is unfavorable to the rational economic behavior as the explanatory factor for the so-called decline of Ottoman Empire. Using an explicitly comparative approach, main aim of the study is to account for the specific trajectory of the Ottoman transformation without recourse to the conventional view. Juxtaposing the Ottoman and Western experience, the traditional explanation runs through the specific trajectory of Ottoman transformation in terms of its mental inferiority with respect to the so-called Western rationale. In contradistinction, this study aims to demonstrate that the Ottoman and Spanish experiences can be analyzed within the same comparative framework without an eye to such factors as &lsquo / irrationality&rsquo / .

I intend to analyze in the present study, the status of the intellectuals under varied state traditions. The Volga-Ural region was under the legacy of Chinggis Khan. In the thirteenth century with the invasion of Mongol-Tatar groups under the leadership of Chinggis Khan&amp / #65533 / s grandchild Batu Khan, the Volga-Bulghar state was removed and the Golden Horde was founded. By the collapse period of the Golden Horde at the end of the 14th century and at the beginning of the 15th century, the Khanates period began in the region: Kazan, Astrakhan and Kasim. The struggles among the khanates were used by Russia in her favor and these problems paved the way for inclusion of the region under Russian hegemony. Especially after the collapse of Kazan in 1552, a long period of Russianization and Christianization took place. In the Volga-Ural region, where there was no Islamic state, one observes a deep impact of Turco Mongol political culture, in which distributive economics based on power-sharing mechanisms prevailed, and a lively exchange of ideas among the intellectuals as well as conflicts and clashes became the norm. The Ottoman Empire, on the other hand, was formed with conquests and ideological aggregation, which led to a concentration of powr in the state. In such an environment, dynastic ideology determined the borders of intellectual life and the ways of expression of ideas. In the present study, my concern is on more on the interference of the state in the intellectual life.

This thesis analyzes the influences of three eminent social scientists on Ottoman historiography. Fernand Braudel, Immanuel Wallerstein and Michael Mann are three important scholars, who challenged the paradigms of world historiography in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, whereas the studies of Braudel and Wallerstein made more strong impacts on the area, the influences of Mann remain limited. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the influences of the former two scholars on Ottoman historiography and then to discuss the reasons of relative omission of Mann&rsquo / s perspective in the area. Moreover, it was aimed to make a very brief introduction to a new perspective on Ottoman history according to Mann&rsquo / s original model.