Customer Reviews

Sultans, The

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book has been highly maligned by a previous reviewer. The reviewer seems to forget that every tragedy against the greek and the armenian detailed in the book by the turks, is true and documented, and in addition the author spends many pages skewering the false notion of the innocent greeks, and notes in detail every time the greeks wronged the turks. It is a shame that his judgement was so clouded and I suspect that the entire book was not read.
What made this book so enjoyable is the writing, a history written like a spy novel. Noel Barber can run the gamut from very dry (very british humor) to pulse pounding murder mystery, to war room of analysis of battlefield tactics, insight into the desceptive world of diplomacy and yet still very reverently accounts greek, armenian and turkish massacres. This follows the Ottman empire from the height of its powers under Suleiman the Magnificient to the Turkey's final emanicipator Kamal Attaturk. Each sultan is given a mini-biography, filled with "Ripley's believe it or not"-like facts, designed to amaze and yet all are true, yet three sultans are studied in detail and to great effect, evoking, emotions from awe to pity, Suleiman the Magnificent, Abdul Hamid II and Kamal Attaturk. Napoleon, Lord Nelson, Churchill, Queen Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, Benjamin Disreali, Queen Victoria and Czar Nicolas all make cameo appearances. It reads more like a novel than a history and yet it is astoundingly accurate. Not only is it a history of the turks, because the Ottomans controlled so much of the muslim world for nearly 500 years, it is also a history of the muslim world and really endlessly fascinating, but what Noel Barber excellently does is tell the private and public lives and struggles of each of the sultans and how that related to the world at the time. This book could have been much more been haughtily named, "The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire," and it would have been equally accurate. But ultimately what makes this a great book is Barber's storytelling that makes the sultans charactures and yet fully realised humans at the same time.

The subject of author Noel Barber's vast, astonishing, and brilliantly readable work of history, "The Sultans," is the bizarre story of the Ottoman Empire as seen through the lives and actions of its Sultans, with their absolute power and terrifying cruelty, their love of pomp and magnificence and their overwhelming venality and corruption.

In this detailed tome, The men, the events, the daily life and the strange customs of the Turkish court are described in vibrant detail. The text begins from Turkey's emergence as a great power in the Sixteenth Century and through the centuries to the death of Kermal Ataturk, who overthrew the Sultanate to establish a new and more modern form of government. This book is a unique and fascinating record of four centuries of glory, debauchery, splendor and cruelty. This book will not disappoint the interested reader. I rate it at five stars for great narrative structure with no hyperbole.

I think Barber does a good job detailing the rule of the Sultans. In the introduction, Barber states his primary interest is detailing the rule of the Sultans (including the Young Turks and Ataturk) after the first ten Sultans. Those that followed the ten (with the exception of Ataturk) brought the Empire down through their weak rule and disastrious decisions. Barber uses many sources (most Western) for his story of the Ottoman Empire. I enjoyed this book because the author does a good job of making the material interesting. I also read the author's book about the Hungarian Revolution and found it a worthwhile read also.
I did not disagree much with the author. Barber threw in several references to some of the Sultans preferences for homosexuality, and I think this interfered with the story. Overall, a good read on the Sick Man of Europe.

I have the book "Sultans" and I find it very subjective. The part about Ataturk is direct replica of Armstrong's "Grey Wolf." At other parts, the writer tried to show that he is quoting from other people as if every person who wrote a book is worthy of quoting. All the quotations are from the missionaries living in Turkey. Given that Turkey was considered to be "the others" in the Christian world, you can not expects the missionaries to be fair in their explanations...

But if you read the book with this in mind, actually the personal explanations of the sultans are fun to read. I learned some personal details about Abdul Hamid which I did not know for example.

But I would not suggest this book as a means to get historical information.

I am a history major at Indiana State University and wrote a paper on the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. I briefly used the book to introduce myself to Süleyman the Magnificent. I disgaree with the reviewer that the book has an agenda of blackening the name of the Turks and their greatest leader Attaturk (Mustafa Kamal).

I did not enjoy reading Noel Barber and used most of my research on Süleyman I in other books. I recommend looking at (1) Shaw Stadford's History of the Ottoman Empire & Modern Turkey Volume 1: Empire of the Gazis and (2) Jason Goodwin's Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire. I give the book two stars because it did not impress very much. It was very a boring book and in a period of twenty-five years there have been many discoveries on the Ottoman Empire that this book is lacking. It is just a great book to full up space at a library.

Who is Süleyman I (if you do not know)? Süleyman I, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire was admired and feared by Europeans as "the Magnificent," and the Turkish people called the "Lawgiver." During his reign, he added to the empire of Hungary, Transylvania, Tripoli, Algiers, Iraq, Rhodes, eastern Anatolia, parts of Georgia, Aegean Islands, Belgrade and Crebe.

A few reviews claim this account of the Sultans is "too subjective" and "highly biased," but I have to disagree. The author tries to draw parallels throughout the work with Western rulers, "...though his reign was blotted by family murders, the private life of his contemporary in England, Henry VIII, was not exactly virtuous." When writing about the Turks flaying Bragadino after the fall of fortress Famagusta, "It is only fair to say that at about the same time Ivan the Terrible of Russia conquered Wittenstein and had the Finnish leader roasted alive on a spear." This book is a good, not so politically correct, introduction to the Ottomans. For further research try Mark Twain's "The Innocents Abroad" and the "The Politically Incorrect Guides" published by Regency.

The book has interesting information about the details of the life of the sultans but it continuously tries to show the sultans and all the Turks as barbarous. In one section it is mentioned in one sentence that the other rulers of the world at the same time acted pretty much the same. But the rest of the book talks about the Turks doing this and that. In the part about the war with Greece, what Greeks have done to the Turks is mentioned in one sentence, then there is page after page of horrible details of what Turkish supposedly have done to Greeks. This book overall is highly biased as a historical work. It is written more as a novel with the agenda of blackening the name of the Turks and their greatest lider Kemal Ataturk.