No description available.

No description available.

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.

After a series of reversals in its wars with European powers during the eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was forced to reevaluate its military technology and training. The realization that the West had outstripped the Muslim East in scientific and technological advancement led Ottoman reformers to introduce changes to the traditional educational system, especially to the curriculum. However, what the reformers soon realized was that the military superiority of Europe was only a symptom, and not the cause of, the West's advancement; this led to the introduction of more Western-style institutions in an effort to achieve its military goals. It was through these new institutions that Western ideas of equality, rationalism and liberalism were introduced into the Ottoman Empire. These imported ideas were bitterly resisted by the ulema, who continued to operate a traditional school system parallel to that developed by the reformers. In spite of their objections, however, the traditional Muslim educational system was forced to undergo a significant metamorphosis both prior to and during the Tanzimat period.

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.

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No description available.

M. A.

M. A.

From 330 to 1453 A.D., Constantinople became first the strategic position on the land route from the west to the east and then the important trading center of the eastern Empire. During this period the Italian cities had to cope with the "Question of the Straits" among themselves. For them, it was merely a commercial question. For the Greeks it was an important question since the city needed to be defended against the onslaught of the Moslems by means of the city's strong walls and by the active fleet in the Straits. The conquest of the Straits by the Turks, beginning around the middle of the fourteenth century lasted for about an hundred years. They accomplished this conquest in 1453. Gradually the Turks were able to extend their control over the entire Black Sea Area, and until that time the Black Sea was not entirely closed to trade. However, beginning in 1475 and lasting until 1774, the Black Sea was considered as a "virgin sea". Not until Russia had established herself upon the northern shores of the Black Sea did Turkey give up her exclusive control over all shipping within that body of water. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, all of the important countries of Europe had gained permission to pass their commerce through the Straits into the Black Sea. The problem of commercial freedom during peace time was pretty well settled, but Turkey through her control was able to prevent foreign warships from using the Straits and from entering the Black Sea. The purpose of this paper is to give an account of the events which took place during the years 1914-1923 in the establishment of a "New Regime of the Straits."