The First of the Modern Ottomans: The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization)
Cambridge University Press, 2/13/2020
EAN 9781316647943, ISBN10: 1316647943
Paperback, 356 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
The eighteenth century brought a period of tumultuous change to the Ottoman Empire. While the Empire sought modernization through military and administrative reform, it also lost much of its influence on the European stage through war and revolt. In this book, Ethan L. Menchinger sheds light on intellectual life, politics, and reform in the Empire through the study of one of its leading intellectuals and statesmen, Ahmed Vâsıf. Vâsıf's life reveals new aspects of Ottoman letters - heated debates over moral renewal, war and peace, justice, and free will - but it also forces the reappraisal of Ottoman political reform, showing a vital response that was deeply enmeshed in Islamic philosophy, ethics, and statecraft. Tracing Vâsıf's role through the turn of the nineteenth century, this book opens the debate on modernity and intellectualism for those students and researchers studying the Ottoman Empire, intellectual history, the Enlightenment, and Napoleonic Europe.
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on the text
Dramatis personae
Chronology
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. Out of the east
early life (c.1735–68)
2. At war (1768–74)
3. Years of faction and reform (1774–87)
4. 'Honorable exile'
in Spain (1787–8)
5. At war (1788–92)
6. Vâsıf and the new order (1792–1800)
7. The height of fame (1800–6)
8. Epilogue
Vâsıf as ancient and modern
Appendix
on the authorship of the Final Word to Refute the Rabble
Glossary
Bibliography
Index.