State, Faith, and Nation in Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Lands
Cambridge University Press, 2/17/2014
EAN 9781107615236, ISBN10: 1107615232
Paperback, 344 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
Current standard narratives of Ottoman, Balkan, and Middle East history overemphasise the role of nationalism in the transformation of the region. Challenging these accounts, this book argues that religious affiliation was in fact the most influential shaper of communal identity in the Ottoman era, that religion moulded the relationship between state and society, and that it continues to do so today in lands once occupied by the Ottomans. The book examines the major transformations of the past 250 years to illustrate this argument, traversing the nineteenth century, the early decades of post-Ottoman independence, and the recent past. In this way, the book affords unusual insights not only into the historical patterns of political development but also into the forces shaping contemporary crises, from the dissolution of Yugoslavia to the rise of political Islam.
Introduction
1. State, faith, nation, and the Ottoman Empire
2. The pre-modern Islamic state and military modernization
3. The breaking of the pre-modern Islamic state
4. The reconstructed Muslim state
5. End of empire
6. The post-Ottoman Balkans
7. Post-Ottoman Turkey
8. The post-Ottoman Arab lands
9. The contemporary Balkans
10. Contemporary Turkey
11. Contemporary Arab countries
Conclusion. State, faith, and nation.