Assigned Reading:

Quataert, chapter 6.

The above article gives in summary form an argument Tezcan develops at much greater length in his book The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Please read further in the book - there are multiple copies in the library.

Primary Source: Mustafa Ali, Counsel for Sultans of 1581, extract.

Seminar Questions:

• Is it useful to describe the changes the Ottoman Empire underwent during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as “decline”?

• Were the Sultans of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries absolute monarchs?

Further Reading:

Rifa'at Ali Abou-el-Haj, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, second edition (Syracuse University Press, 2005).

Rifa‘at Ali Abou-el-Haj, The 1703 Rebellion and the Structure of Ottoman Politics (Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1984).

Carter Vaughn Findley, "Political Culture and the Great Households," Cambridge History of Turkey 3: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839, 65-80.

Cemal Kafadar, "The Question of Ottoman Decline," Harvard Middle Eastern & Islamic Review ​4 (1997-98), 30-75.

Dina Rizk Khoury, "The Ottoman Centre versus Provincial Power-Holders: An Analysis of the Historiography," Cambridge History of Turkey 3: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839, 133-156.

Metin Kunt, The Sultan's Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550-1650 (Columbia University Press, 1983).

Bernard Lewis, "Ottoman Observers of Ottoman Decline," Islamic Studies 1 (1962), 71-87.

Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2010).