The First of the Modern Ottomans
The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif

This book explores intellectual life, politics and reform in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire by studying statesman and historian Ahmed Vâs?f.

Ethan L. Menchinger (Author)

9781316647943, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 February 2020

356 pages
23 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.5 kg

'Although there are a few good biographies of well-known Ottoman bureaucrats and intellectuals, intimate accounts of Ottoman individuals have not proliferated in modern scholarship. Ethan L. Menchinger's The First of the Modern Ottomans is therefore a very welcome and well-executed contribution to this genre … [This is] required reading for all who want to understand the intellectual history of the period …' Hakan Karateke, Professor of Ottoman Turkish Culture, Language and Literature, University of Chicago

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 Vâs?f. Vâs?f'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 Vâs?f'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. Vâs?f and the new order (1792–1800)
7. The height of fame (1800–6)
8. Epilogue: Vâs?f as ancient and modern
Appendix: on the authorship of the Final Word to Refute the Rabble
Glossary
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Napoleonic Wars [HBWH], Military history [HBW], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1], European history [HBJD]