An 'Akhi' Genealogical Tree

This dissertation aims to analyze the formation of the Ottoman Empire and to make a contribution to the scholarship by presenting a possible new perspective. The inspiration to choose this field as a dissertation subject stemmed not only from my personal interest in the problem, but also from the rather obvious observation that the academic discussion of the socio-political dynamics of the empire's formative period has been locked into hardened factions and false debates. Because of the limited temporal and spatial scope of the existing studies and because of the lack of a comparative approach, the issue has not been seen in its totality and has therefore not been resolved. A rather "closed" viewpoint has prevented Ottoman historians from benefiting from potentially very useful social-scientific, world-historical, and comparative tools that might provide them with new insights. In sum, the debate has been deadlocked to such an extent that it is an absolute must for researchers to now look beyond the conceptual, temporal, and spatial limits of the current historiography in order to produce any useful contribution.

Course Description: This course is a seminar exploration of the Ottoman Empire’s history and cultural legacies from its formation in the late 13th century until 1789 – with a strong concentration on the “classical age” of Ottoman rule. The course will concentrate on the historical evolution of the Ottoman Empire’s political, religious, cultural, and institutional aspects. There is no prerequisite for this course, although it is preferred that students have taken at least one Middle East History course prior to enrollment. This course also covers intellectual issues the face Ottomanists. We explore how Ottoman historians think about, analyze, and interpret the past; discuss the nature of our historical knowledge; and evaluate different theories that ground our view of that history. Finally, we examine the role of historiography in shaping Ottoman historians’ work.

The question of “who is an Ottoman” has already yielded interesting answers, but they principally seem to reflect the multifaceted nature of the Ottoman Empire itself and therefore do not bring us much closer to an understanding of the abstract concept of Ottoman identity. While trying not to be essentialist, this article aims to establish some concrete criteria for our definition of homo ottomanicus. The anatomization of one individual case suggests that Ottoman identity was the product of a societal grid composed of a multitude of boundaries, only the fiscal and legal ones of which tended to be rigid and relatively objectifiable.