(Source: Stanford University Press)
Stanford University Press has published a new
book on Ottoman law, using textual analysis of legal documents to show “how their formulation of the "proper
order of things" configured the state itself”
ABOUT THE BOOK
he "natural order of the state" was
an early modern mania for the Ottoman Empire. In a time of profound and
pervasive imperial transformation, the ideals of stability, proper order, and
social harmony were integral to the legitimization of Ottoman power. And as
Ottoman territory grew, so too did its network of written texts: a web of
sultanic edicts, aimed at defining and supplementing imperial authority in the
empire's disparate provinces. With this book, Heather L. Ferguson studies how
this textual empire created a unique vision of Ottoman legal and social order,
and how the Ottoman ruling elite, via sword and pen, articulated a claim to
universal sovereignty that subverted internal challengers and external rivals.
The Proper Order of Things offers the story of
an empire, at once familiar and strange, told through the shifting written
vocabularies of power deployed by the Ottomans in their quest to thrive within
a competitive early modern environment. Ferguson transcends the question of
what these documents said, revealing instead how their formulation of the
"proper order of things" configured the state itself. Through this
textual authority, she argues, Ottoman writers ensured the durability of their
empire, creating the principles of organization on which Ottoman statecraft and
authority came to rest.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Heather L. Ferguson is Associate Professor of
Middle East and Ottoman History at Claremont McKenna College. She is Associate
Editor of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture and Editor of the
Review of Middle East Studies.
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