"From the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul, a colorful, magical tale set during the height of the Ottoman Empire In her latest novel, Turkey's preeminent female writer spins an epic tale spanning nearly a century in the life of the Ottoman Empire. In 1540, twelve-year-old Jahan arrives in Istanbul. As an animal tamer in the sultan's menagerie, he looks after the exceptionally smart elephant Chota and befriends (and falls for) the sultan's...

Evaluates the impact of World War I on the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East as a whole, explaining the region's less-understood but essential contributions to the war and the establishment of present-day conflicts. In 1914 the Ottoman Empire was depleted of men and resources after years of war against Balkan nationalist and Italian forces. But as the powers of Europe slid inexorably toward war, the Middle East could not escape the vast and enduring...

"The Mapmaker's Daughter, a historical novel set in the 16th century, is the confession of Nurbanu, born Cecilia Baffo Veniero -- the mesmerizing, illegitimate Venetian who became the most powerful woman in the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent -- the bold backstory of the Netflix Series, Magnificent Century. Narrating the spectacular story of her rise to the pinnacle of imperial power, Queen Mother Nurbanu,...

A beautiful, strong-willed woman leaves the United States after meeting a doctor who runs a remote medical mission within the Ottoman Empire, which is on the brink of World War I.

"Istanbul, 1683: Mehmed IV, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, is preparing to lay siege to Vienna, capital of the Holy Roman Empire, when a mysterious visitor arrives in his bedroom--naked, covered in strange tattoos--to deliver a dangerous, world-changing message. Paris, 2017: Ottoman flags have been flying over the great city for three hundred years, ever since its fall--along with all of Europe--to the empire's all-conquering army. Notre Dame has been...

"Between 1911 and 1923, a series of wars--chief among them World War I--would engulf the Ottoman Empire and its successor states. It is a story we think we know well, but as Sean McMeekin shows us in this revelatory new history, we know far less than we think. Drawing from his years of ground-breaking research in newly opened Ottoman and Russian archives, The Ottoman Endgame brings to light the entire strategic narrative that led to an unstable new...

Growing up, Dawn MacKeen heard from her mother how her grandfather Stepan miraculously escaped from the Turks during the Armenian genocide of 1915, when more than one million people-half the Armenian population-were killed. In The Hundred-Year Walk MacKeen alternates between Stepan's courageous account, drawn from his long-lost journals, and her own story as she attempts to retrace his steps, setting out alone to Turkey and Syria, shadowing her resourceful,...

Partners of the Empire offers a radical rethinking of the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over this unstable period, the Ottoman Empire faced political crises, institutional shakeups, and popular insurrections. It responded through various reform options and settlements. New institutional configurations emerged; constitutional texts were codified-and annulled. The empire became a political theater where different actors...

With the exception of a few targeted aerial bombardments of the city's port, Beirut and Mount Lebanon did not see direct combat in World War I. Yet civilian casualties in this part of the Ottoman Empire reached shocking heights, possibly numbering half a million people. No war, in its usual understanding, took place there, but Lebanon was incontestably war-stricken. As a food crisis escalated into famine, it was the bloodless incursion of starvation...

The father of the legendary Ottoman sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, Selim I (The Grim) set the stage for centuries of Ottoman supremacy by doubling the size of the empire. Conquering Eastern Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt, Selim promoted a politicized Sunni Ottoman identity against the Shiite Safavids of Iran, thus shaping the early modern Middle East. Analyzing a wide array of sources in Ottoman-Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, H. Erdem Cipa offers a fascinating...