Customer Reviews

Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

While I don't regret buying or reading this book, potential buyers should be aware of its limitations. Though subtitled "A History of the Ottoman Empire" it is not really a history, and is about only a small part of the Empire. The Ottoman Empire stretched across Egypt and North Africa, included all of Near Asia stretching into Persia, and Greece and the Balkans in Europe. In 326 pages, however, this book contains not thirty paragraphs dealing with Africa or Asia. It's essentially about Ottoman rule of Constantinople and Europe. (The chapter on "Cities" mentions only Constantinople, Sarajevo and Belgrade.) Rather than a history, this book is really an allusion to the history of the Ottomans. There is no narrative thread, except here and there. Essential dates are omitted, or available only in the Chronology in the back. Historical characters are mentioned, but not introduced. Many interesting references are made without specifying the names of parties involved, or the dates. The battle of Manzikert, for instance, which set the stage for the decline of Byzantium and the ultimate rise of the Ottomans, is mentioned once, its location not given, and the two sides not specified. The overwhelming impression given by the style is vagueness. It abounds with pretty paragraphs, but lacks specifics. Assertions are made so ambiguously that one would not feel confident citing facts from this book without checking another reference first. There is a tendency to cite examples or give quotes separated by centuries, as though everything stayed the same throughout. Sometimes this is true, but we would object strongly if a paragraph on the women of London had but three examples given; one from the 1st century, one from the 12th century, and one from 1787.

It was a delight to read this book even though the topic was so familiar. One had to contend mostly with very narrow and stuffy academic treatments or blatant propaganda until recently if one wanted to just learn, as an ordinary interested person, about one of the last great empires, Ottomans. Even as a student of recent Ottoman history, much new perspective was gained. It is easy to read and enjoyable. It captures the colors, sounds, smells and tastes of this fascinating empire, its times and its adventures, effecting so much of what happens around us even today. How the Ottomans managed such a huge, multi-ethnic, multi-religious society for such a long time is also a very timely and relevant topic given the global political developments following the end of the Cold War. There are some quirks of style such as notes that lead to no interesting or related facts but seem to go tangential and comments that seem to just hang in the air, but it did not distract from the flow of the story at all. Readers without any background in the topic or region may feel lost a little at times as some of the reviews suggest. Historical accuracy and references are excellent, especially for a self-proclaimed travel-writer. It was especially appreciated by this reader that a strict chronological story line was not followed, which distinguishes it from other "history" books. Mr. Goodwin puts real people and events and motives behind the story, which has understandably frustrated those readers who would like to see Turks or Ottomans as pure evil and cause of everything ever done wrong. Mr. Goodwin does not give them much satisfaction. The Ottomans represented for a long while an alternate path to civilzation, if only world did not have boundries. I am still perplexed by the very strange epilogue while the very end of the empire, which is one of its most interesting and relevant periods, gets a very brief treatment. One only hopes that more of this type of writing follows this book. The topic is so rich, so poorly treated and so many lessons are to be learned yet. I recommend highly for all serious and casual readers.

The book's main weakness, which most of the other reviewers have alluded to, is its meandering, seemingly random and non-chronological telling of the Ottomans' bizarre and majestic story. This apparent flaw is also a strength, however, as it allows Goodwin the space to show off his main talent as a writer: namely, delivering amusing anectodes about relatively obscure events in a breezily British style marked with large doses of wit and irony. This reliance on anectodes means, of course, that "Lords of the Horizons" can never be a bible for the serious Ottoman scholar, but it is perfect for the armchair historian, potential visitor to Turkey, or for one who simply enjoys exploring the quirks of history and human societies, and reflecting on these in an irreverently cosmopolitan way.

This book, at times poetic, is an incredible depiction of an empire from its rise to its fall. However, it is not written with the traditional sense of history in mind. The author will give examples from 1781 while writing about something that happened in 1400's. This style is most likely what confused most of the readers who are complaining about the book. Undoubtedly, it would help to know about the subject beforehand, but this book can also be enjoyed by someone who doesn't know anything about the turkish history...(although upon hearing this the author would say something like, 'Ottoman history is not about turkish history, it is about the history of the multi-cultural empire that they formed and governed.')

The language is quite rich and engulfing. Some chapters are impossible to put down...aspects of a past culture delienated in a way that sounds almost mystical. It is amazing to read about a society so advanced that it assimilated other races into their own at a time when most of the world didn't even recodnize the word toleration...and it is also amazing to see how their traditional and stagnant ideologies remained unchanged for too long to cause their own downfall. In contrast to this, a couple of chapters are a drag to get through, certain unnecessary details here and there dulling a book that is otherwise an incredible read. Epilogue was also quite confusing.

Highly recommended.

Lords of the Horizons is a delicious, impressionistic travelogue through the little-understood Ottoman Empire. It is tricky, often infuriating read, but worth the effort.

Goodwin rewards those who pay attention: often word contexts are mentioned once. Miss the one mention that Ragusa is now Dubrovnik, and you will find yourself confused 200 pages later. Bring a map. Part of the book's charm is its evocation of time/place, but with the meager map provided, you'd be lost halfway through the first chapter. A street map of Istanbul will be handy, as well.

This is a pain, but well worth it: part of the joy of this book is the discovery of a new world, with places you've never heard like Anatolia, Edirne, Allepo, Smyrna (now Izmir), Ragusa, Bursa, Chios, & Candia. The same goes for all the obscure words scattered everywhere. A dictionary helps, as does the glossary in the back. Best is an encyclopedia with listings of every obscure place and name.

Criticisms posted here of the Goodwin's often dense style and frequent use of obscure nomenclature seem odd -- as if readers don't expect to be challenged, or learn anything new in books anymore. I too felt like tossing the book the first time through, but once you start looking things up, going back and retracing references in the index, and re-reading footnotes, the thing starts to make sense, and the book's richness becomes clear.

Readers who object to this book on political grounds miss the point: assumed is a certain knowledge that life was mean and often brutal for much of the last 600 years, no less so in the Ottoman sphere than in the Christian. Ferocious bloodlettings are almost breezily mentioned. What matters are not particular battles, or slaughters, but the social and political currents of the empire as it grew and prospered, reached its apex, and slowly declined. Which is why Goodwin barely mentions the Armenian genocide. To him, the empire in its death throws was hardly itself, when "massacre became the stock response to threat."

The polyglot, tolerant empire that had given its citizens stability and peace for centuries was gone. That Goodwin's history is in part a eulogy for this lost and forgotten world does not whitewash its failings; they have been documented elsewhere. But it gives us a loving, perspicacious look at world few of us know.

There are just too many annoying references to events that have not been introduced yet and references to terms that are obscure and not covered in the glossary. It is eliptical rather than linear in its discussion of the chronology of historical events. The author is talented and interested in his subject, but too careless with the needs of his readers. And how about a map of the city of Constantinople, since various geographic aspects of the city figure in the text, but are hard to understand if you do not know the city. I agree with the general gist of the other readers who have given it a 2-3 star rating.

This was a disappointing read. I had heard so much hype about this book that I was really looking forward to it and assumed it would be a 5 star production. Alas, it was not to be. The book is not well organized. It jumps around through time and space so much that you don't get the feeling that you are reading something coherent and substantial. There are also too many anecdotes thrown in that are presented as factual but seem to me to have a tall-tale quality to them. You start to wonder what is true and what is not. Fortunately, here and there are bits that are interesting and well-written, which is why I am giving the book 3 stars. 2 such highlights are the sieges of Constantinople and Vienna by the Ottomans in 1453 and 1683, respectively. These sections have a nice narrative flow and are exciting to read. I only wish that I could have said the same for the rest of this book....

Jason Goodwin has not produced here an exhaustive history of the Ottoman Empire, detailing every Sultan, event, nor all aspects of this once mighty empire. Nor does he claim to. He does not produce the end-all, be-all book on the subject, but then again, he doesn't claim that this is the only volume you'll ever need on the subject. Readers looking for such are sure to be disappointed.

What he did produce is a book that highlights many aspects of the Ottoman Empire, its history, geography, culture, customs, and social mores. Much history is covered, from the days before the final fall of the Byzantine Empire into the early decades of the 20th century. Goodwin does a fairly good job covering large sections of Ottoman history, particularly with regards to Bayezit, Mehmet II, Suleyman the Magnificent, the numerous attempts to conquer Vienna and push into Europe, Barbarossa, the struggles the jannisaries had against modernization, the Crimean War, the Greek war of independence, Mehmet Ali...there is history here aplenty. Other periods or aspects of Ottoman history, such as the Young Turk movement, the Barbary pirates, or relations/actions against the Persians, are much less well-covered.

To me though the real reason to buy this book is its fascinating potrayal of what life was actually like in the Ottoman Empire, addressing issues of nationalities, of the economy, of science and techonology, of every day life. I believe that a lot of these details are lacking in other works on the Ottomans. Goodwin discusses Ottoman view of time for instance, of the empire's long refusal to make use of clocks and watches long after Europe and the Americas had embraced them, and then suddenly becoming perhaps worshipful of them, erecting great clock towers that stood "as a symbol of Ottoman reform, lonely as lighthouses in every Ottoman city." Another sultan was known for his large collection of western timepieces, who "crammed his saloon with two hundred clocks, eighty of them grandfather clocks," setting Western visitors ill at ease. Goodwin goes into some detail about the Ottoman guild system, especially prevalent in Constantinople, each guild with its own distinct dress. Whether carpenter or chalk-maker, mason or gravedigger, tavern keeper or baker, each guild had a distinctive dress which its members proudly wore. Goodwin also writes of endowments or vakif, acts of piety and charity enshrined in Islamic law, where people willed money to provide for public services in perpuity after their death, franging from maintaing bridges to maintaing hostels or hans to even feeding birds when there was snow on the ground. Goodwin even goes into some of the fauna of the empire, of the numerous dogs for instance that once roamed the streets of Constantinople, regarded by the Ottomans as unclean but accepted by them for "their prescence in the divine plan, recognized their habits, and never called strays." Though perhaps negelecting some nationalities, Goodwin does discuss the customs, dress, habits, and relationship with the Ottoman government with such diverse nationalities as the Greeks, the Albanians, the Jews, and the Tartars.

More than just some of the quirks and local color of the Ottoman Empire Goodwin goes into considerable about several major aspects of Ottoman life, in particularly how their military was arranged, how they waged war, and one of the hallmarks of the empire, the recruitment, organization, and usage of the janissaries, the slave soldiers of the Ottomans, for centuries recruited from a "boy levy" on the subject Balkan peoples. Goodwin also details the nature of the Sultancy, is progression from strong ruler to one who merely reigned, in the beginning a strong and charismatic military and spiritual leader, in the end one often as not beholden to the mob, of progression from the law of the fraticide to the infamous Cage instead, and its effects on the nature and type of Sultans that governed the Ottoman Empire.

A final note I would like to make about the book is how it ties in the history of other regions of the world and how they either affected the Ottoman Empire or were affected by it. The massive influx for instance of cheap American silver by the Spanish into the Mediterranean caused massive inflation in the Ottoman Empire, which itself was based on a silver standard, one in which gold has less value than silver. As the Ottoman Empire slowly but surely conqured the archipelagoes of the Aegean and cut off most western trade in the eastern Mediterranean, how this lead to the decline of Venice and Genoa, in the latter's case pushing sailors that would have once made their fortunes in the Levant and perhaps the Black Sea to instead explore strange, new worlds. How the the threat of the Ottomans to Vienna and the heart of Europe in fact may have helped saved the Lutheran revolution and the Protestant reformation as a whole. And perhaps how in the end ultimately three of the greatest "superpowers" of the Renaissance - the Ottoman Empire, the Spanish, and the Venetians - succeeded together and ultimately failed together.

In the end this is a good book, in some ways an introduction, to the Ottoman Empire, a civilization that boldly sought to straddle both Europe and Asia, one that once threatened all of Europe and one that was more centuries, even well into its long and slow decline, a land often of peace and prosperity. Well worth reading.

A good history book does not restrict itself to dry historical narrative, but offers anecdotes that make historical events comprehensible on a human scale. We have all read -- or put down -- history texts which fail to do this. "Lords of the Horizons" is loaded with these anecdotes. Unfortunately, it almost completely fails to offer a historical framework for them.

Some of the anecdotes are fascinating and insightful, and for the most part I enjoyed them. Goodwin delves into important intangibles that tend to get overlooked in traditional history writing. What was the Ottoman sense of time? This is examined in some detail. Interesting stuff, but useful only if it can be used to interpret the historical context, about which we are told little. For example, the millet system, a unique aspect of Ottoman administration and an important piece of the modern puzzles of the Levant and the Balkans, is not covered in any kind of systematic way -- a baffling omission.

Two-thirds of the way through the book, I still wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It wasn't until I realized that the subtitle, "A History of the Ottoman Empire," was misleading that I came to any peace with the book. This is not a historical narrative; it's a color commentary on the historical narrative. In that role, it's a nice little book. But it claims to be a history, and in this category it fails decisively.

No book about Turkey or the Ottoman Empire can be written without provoking outrage from an interested party. If the massacres of Armenians early in this century are mentioned at all, a vocal element will protest vociferously. If anything else is mentioned, or if particular words are or are not used, another group will be incensed. You can't win. However, this book contains a single paragraph on the subject which is worded so obliquely it would make a Middle Eastern politician blush. The scope of this book is broad, and not really focused on the later period, so one wouldn't expect reams on this topic, but this is really pretty embarrassing.

Someone said that if you're going to read only one book on this subject, this should be the one. I would counter this emphatically. If you are going to read only one book on the subject, this should decidedly not be the one. If you're going to read two or three, you may find it an interesting companion to the others. Otherwise, give it a pass. It's not a bad book, but it's not a very good one, either.

Terrific, exotic, very literate highlighting of selected episodes from the history of the Turkish Empire. The book assumes, however, a good bit of knowledge on the reader's part of the history of Constantinople, which I would not have had prior to reading about and visiting Istanbul last year. The many reviews here show a violent split between those who brought that knowledge to the book and enjoyed the author's keen and ironic commentary, and those who could not follow him and/or thought him too elitist. Don't make this your first book on the topic.