Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire

A hoot! The author manages to write several hundred pages of Ottoman history, without mentioning a single (well, perhaps a single) Ottoman (or even Islamic) source. Nor does he show much familiarity with Modern Turkish, Ottoman, Persian or Arabic.

What you do get is a multitude of anecdotes by various westerners about the Ottoman Empire, from the earliest days to the Victorian age, mostly taken at face value. In fact, the book should be titled 'Western views on the Ottoman Empire', rather than a history.

Jason Goodwin writes an entertaining story, and it is a very good read, but if you want serious history, go elsewhere.

If you're looking for a well-ordered and rigorous history of the Ottoman Empire, this isn't it. If you're looking for anecdotal tales that give a sense of the Ottoman Empire from its foundations on the steppes of Asia to its demise in the early 20th century, this might not be a bad choice.

Goodwin weaves together an extended string of vignettes, almost entirely from the Western perspective, about the sultans, grand viziers, pashas and many who opposed or attempted to take advantage of them. They are, by turns, informative, amusing, appalling or all three, and the end result is something that feels almost novel-like, rather than a history tome. Some stories provide some actual understanding of the Empire. For example, we learn that show more government officials were all slaves and could not bequeath anything to their children (who were born as free citizens), thus preventing political dynasties (other than the sultan, of course). Others were simply historically colorful: "Barbarossa did not have a red beard at all, but lifted the name from his elder brother, who had been a promising pirate himself before his death."

In the end, I felt I came out with some sense of—if not a great deal of analytical insight into—what made the Empire work during its centuries of expansion and what caused it to crumble from within during its long decline.

Three things keep the book from being well-recommended by me. First, it's a bit hard to follow at times. Goodwin certainly doesn't follow a linear chronology, nor is he particularly good about making sure you make the same leap he does when he suddenly changes whom he's referring to in mid-paragraph. This leads to a few moments of confusion requiring the reader to back up and follow along again.

Second, it's a trifle repetitious. I found myself saying, "Didn't I learn that a while ago?" at several places through the book.

Third…maps!! Why a book that has a rather large number of "he moved here, while that guy moved there" in it doesn't have any maps to speak of is absolutely beyond me. There's one poorly-printed map that shows a couple country boundaries and a few capital cities. It really detracted from the reading experience and…alone…cost this a half star.

In conclusion, a book I'd recommend if you go into it with appropriate expectations, but not one I'd recommend as a prime source to anyone looking to study the Ottoman Empire. show less

Goodwin covers the history of the Ottomans from Osman through the last Sultan. He alternates between a lively narrative of events, often focused on a major figure (e.g., Mehmet the Conqueror) or event, and social history focused on customs and everyday life in the empire. His treatment is rooted in the primary sources (Ogier de Busbecq, Sir Paul Rycaut, Evliya Çelebi, etc.) which he frequently quotes at length. Like Herodotus and Livy, he understands that history is, above all, telling a good story well. My only complaint is that Goodwin does not always provide enough information to follow up on the quoted sources.

My previous acquaintance with Ottoman history was always from the perspective of the Byzantines, medieval and modern show more Greeks, and the European powers. It is very enlightening to read about it with a focus on the Ottomans. A good book to read with coffee and croisssants! show less

This is a very frustrating book. Maybe it's me, but I couldn't follow him at all. I wanted to learn something about the Ottoman Empire, I'm not sure I did. The best way I can describe it; standing at a party listening to two professors tell interesting stories about the Ottoman Empire, oblivious to the fact that you don't have their background. Or maybe a hyperactive 10 year old (a very knowledgeable one) telling the story as if they just saw Star Wars. I now know various bits of trivia about the subject, but I have no overall sense of it.

The writing is completely scattershot, jumping between people and time periods from line to line with no warning or definition. Names and terms are thrown out without telling who or what they are. You show more might get a very brief, very vague hint of a explanation of something, and then 50 pages later it's mentioned again in a totally different context with no background. Too much of the time I simply couldn't understand who or what he was talking about, and/or what was happening. Much of the time I just didn't know what the author was trying to say.

I can only guess that the point was to try and not make a dry text book history, but instead we get the ADHD professor version. I only slogged through it because the subject was so fascinating, but I did start to view it as a chore. I can't give it one star because I didn't totally hate the book, but I can't think of much that I liked either.

Now I need to find another book about the Ottoman Empire. show less

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things . Machiavelli

Of course Niccolo also said that conquering the Ottomans would be most difficult, but afterwards rather easy to hold or occupy. It is good being glib. I violated my latest reading plan over the holiday weekend.

Ottomans did not, on the whole, engage in trade; they worked in administration; their minorities, Greeks, Jews and Armenians, seperated from them by a gulf of culture and sympathy, traditionally looked after the money side.

Jason Goodwin has provided us with a sprawling popular history, one surveying an empire which stretched across three show more continents for around 600 hundred years and conducted its affairs in a likely two dozen languages. The matter is presented in a predictably uneven manner. The text is both compelling and insightful as the reader gauges the expansion and retraction of the House of Osman. The Ottoman core principles contributed almost solely to conquest. The reality of an increasing population and the ravages of time forced and exacerbated its fatal contradictions. Is it me, did anyone else know the origins of the croissant extend from the Siege of Vienna? I did not and remain unsure what I think about all that. I'm a bagel fellow by trade. show less

Joy's review: The rise, the very long malaise, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. So much in here that I had no idea of since we mostly learn European history in school. Goodwin writes well and organizes the book around themes rather than in strict chronology. His focus is on culture, business, customs, and how the empire was organized. For me, this makes for much more interesting reading than describing which sultan did what. A very worthwhile book.

This is not a history of the Ottoman Empire as the cover reads. Instead, it is a series of chapters, more or less in chronological order, which cover various themes that apply to the Ottoman Empire (an example: from the chapter entitled "Rhythms" --"The Ottomans felt the geomancer's horror of hard lines, dead spaces and sharp angles"[(p. 133]) . This plus a tendency to repeat incidents, double-back in time, and use extremely florid language, made this book a long slog for me. The Ottoman Empire is one of the black holes in my knowledge of Euro-Asian history, and I was looking for an entertaining but focused introduction before tackling the book sitting on my coffee table, purchased for its excellent reviews, [b:The Fall of the Ottomans: show more The Great War in the Middle East|21535310|The Fall of the Ottomans The Great War in the Middle East|Eugene Rogan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1400962554s/21535310.jpg|40864291].

It is obvious that the author loves this period and has researched it extensively, gathering in great bundles of amusing incidents, arcane details, and miscellaneous tales. The outcome--a great tangled web--is simultaneously entertaining but also, frankly tiring. As other readers have commented, it is best read with a finger on the page showing the chronological order of sultans to help one keep their historical place, and another on a good atlas of Islamic history, such as the [b:Atlas of Islamic History|22481271|Atlas of Islamic History|Peter Sluglett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1415588341s/22481271.jpg|41923369]. The latter has been an essential companion to me since it first appeared in 2014. I can not praise it and its maps highly enough.

This is a book to read after one has read a fairly straight-forward history of the Ottoman Empire (please feel free to recommend some). If you skip this step, the weight of the peripheral details in this volume are so many, it's like mixing together a dozen or more ingredients in a complicated recipe before each has been weighed or measured out. show less