Syllabus/achievement requirements

The readings for this class will be a combination of books, articles, book chapters and English translations of primary texts.

Books

• Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP.
• A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Suggested reading/viewing

• Novel: Amin Maalouf Samarkand
• Film: Mongol (2007) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxGpFY6OJWg

If possible, there will be an excursion to the portrait collection at the National Museum in conjunction with the Art and Power seminar in Week 12. Information will be given in class.

Course schedule

Week 1 (Monday 13 January)

Gunpowder Empires?

• Casale, Giancarlo. ¡°The Islamic Empires of the Early Modern World,¡± in The Cambridge World History, Volume VI: The Construction of a Global World, 1400-1800 4 CE, Part I: Foundations, Jerry H. Bentley, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 323-344.
• Canfield, Robert. 1991. ¡°Introduction. The Turko-Persian Tradition.¡± in Canfield, R. L. (ed.) ¡°Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-34. available online: http://assets.cambridge.org/97805213/90941/sample/9780521390941ws.pdf
• Barfield, T. J. (2002). Turk, Persian, and Arab: Changing Relationships Between Tribes and State in Iran and along Its Frontiers. In N. R. Keddie and R. Mathee, eds., Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics. London and Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

Week 2 (Thursday 23 January)

The Rise of Empires

• Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP. pp. 10-76 (Chapter 1: India, Iran, and Anatolia from the tenth to the sixteenth century. And Chapter 2: The Rise of Muslim Empires.)
• McNeill, William H. Age of Gunpowder Empires, 1450-1800 (Essays on Global and Comparative History). American Historical Assn; Edition Unstated edition (March 1, 1990). (Excerpt 49 pages)

Week 3 (Thursday 30 January)

Military conquest

• ?goston, Gabor. 2012. ¡°Ottoman military organization (up to 1800)¡± in The Encyclopedia of War, First Edition. Edited by Gordon Martel.
• Matthee, Rudi. 1996, ¡°Unwalled Cities and Restless Nomads: firearms and artillery in Safavid Iran¡± in Charles Melville (ed.) Safavid Persia: The History and Politics of an Islamic Society 389-416.
• ?nalc?k, Halil. 1954. ¡±Ottoman Methods of Conquest¡± Studia Islamica 106(2): 103.
• ¡°8. Shah Abbas and Jahangir Debate the Conquest of Kandahar¡± in The Middle East and the Islamic World Reader, pp. 58-61.

Week 4 (Thursday 6 February)

Royal Legitimacy

• Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP. pp. 77-134.
• Baburname: excerpt from A.S. Beveridge¡¯s translation ¡°The Memoirs of Babur¡±, The Babur-Nama in English, pp 1-24.
• ¡°The story of Boghach Khan, son of Dirse Khan¡± Book of Dede Korkut pp 27-41.

Submission of first reflection paper: Barfield 2002.

Week 5 (Thursday 13 February)

Courtly Cultures

• Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP. pp. 135-176 (Chapter 5: Imperial Cultures)
• Walter Andrews, Mehmet Kalpakl? The Age of Beloveds, 1-31.
• Sharma, Sunil. 2017. Mughal Arcadia. Persian Literature in an Indian Court. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1-88.

Week 6

Reading week

No classes this week.

Week 7 (Thursday 27 February)

Golden Age?

• Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP. pp. 177-207 (Chapter 6: Golden Ages: Profane and Sacred Empires)
• Kafadar, Cemal. 1993. ¡°The Myth of the Golden Age. Ottoman Historical Consciousness in the Post S¨¹leym?nic Era.¡± In Halil ?nalc?k and Cemal Kafadar. S¨¹leym?n The Second and His Time. Istanbul: Isis Press, 37-48.
  Online: https://archive.org/details/SULEYMAN2

Week 8 (Thursday 5 March)

Imperial Refinement

• Dale, Stephen. 2010. The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Cambridge: CUP. pp. 208-246 (Chapter 7: Imperial Culture in the Golden Age)
• Kinra, Rajeev. 2015. Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1-59.

Week 9 (Thursday 12 March)

Tolerance, Syncretism and Confessionalisation

• Braude, Benjamin. 1982. ?Foundation Myths of the Millet System? Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds.). Christians & Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society.
• Baltac?o?lu-Brammer, Ay?e. 2014. ¡°Formation of K?z?lba? Communities in Anatolia and Ottoman Responses, 1450s-1630s¡± International Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol. 20, Nos. 1&2, 2014, pp. 21-48.

Week 10 (Monday 16 or Thursday 19 March)

Sufism, Mysticism, Millennarianism (seminar)

• A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. 16-106.
• Fleischer, Cornell H. 1983. "Royal Authority, Dynastic Cyclism, and ¡®Ibn Khaldunism¡¯ in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Letters."  Journal of Asian and African Studies 18 (3-4): 198-220.
• Chann, Naindeep Singh. 2009. Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction: Origins of the S?a?h?ib-Qira?n. Iran & the Caucasus, Vol. 13, No. 1.

Week 11 (Thursday 26 March)

Religious Legitimacy

• Guy Burak, ¡°The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Post-Mongol Context of the Ottoman Adoption of a School of Law,¡± Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 3 (2013): 579¨C602
• A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. 107-253.

Submission of the second reflection paper: Chann 2009.

Week 12 (Monday 30 March or Thursday 2 April)

Art and Power (seminar)

• Necipo?lu, G¨¹lr¨¹. 1993. ¡°Framing the Gaze in Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Palaces¡± Ars Orientalis 23, Pre-Modern Islamic Palaces pp. 303-342
• Monica Juneja ¡°Circulation and beyond ¨C the trajectories of vision in early modern Eurasia¡± in: Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann (ed): Circulations in the Global History of Art, London: Ashgate, 2015, pp. 59-78.

Week 13

Easter break

Week 14

Easter break

Week 15 (23 April)

Trade and Diplomacy

• Mathee, Rudolph. The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730. Cambridge, CUP, 1-118.
• Suraiya Faroqhi, ¡°Trade Between the Ottomans and Safavids: The Acem Tu?ccari and others,¡± in Iran and the World in the Safavid Age, edited by Edmund Herzig and Willem Floor (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 237-253
• Windler, Christian. 2001. "Diplomatic History as a Field for Cultural Analysis: Muslim-Christian Relations in Tunis, 1700-1840."  The Historical Journal 44 (1): 79-106.

Week 17 (Monday 27 or Thursday 30 April)

Multiple Modernities? (seminar)

• Tezcan, Baki. 2010. The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp 1-13, 191-243.
• Ze'evi, Dror. 2004. "Back to Napoleon? Thoughts on the Beginning of the Modern Era in the Middle East."  Mediterranean Historical Review 19 (1): 73-94.
• Francis Robinson, ¡°Ottomans¨CSafavids¨CMughals: Shared Knowledge and Connective Systems,¡± Journal of Islamic Studies 8 (1997) 151¨C184.

Week 18 (Monday 4 May)

Synthesis and overview