British travellers regarded all inhabitants of the seventeenth-century Ottoman empire as 'slaves of the sultan', yet they also made fine distinctions between them. This book provides the first comprehensive cultural historical account of how British travellers understood the non-Muslim minority peoples they encountered in the Ottoman empire, and of how they perceived and described them in the mediating shadow of the Turks. In doing so it seeks to change our perceptions of the British encounter with the Ottomans by exploring the entangled identities of the Ottoman subjects in the English imagination, de-centering the image of the 'Terrible Turk' and Islam.

British travellers regarded all inhabitants of the seventeenth-century Ottoman empire as ‘slaves of the sultan’, yet they also made fine distinctions between them. This book provides the first historical account of how British travellers understood the non-Muslim peoples they encountered in Ottoman lands, and of how they perceived and described them in the mediating shadow of the Turks. In doing so it changes our perceptions of the European encounter with the Ottomans by exploring the complex identities of the subjects of the Ottoman empire in the English imagination, de-centering the image of the ‘Terrible Turk’ and Islam.

"The Discovery of Ottoman Greece unearths forgotten research by the early modern philhellenist and Lutheran reformer Martin Crusius. His extensive study of Greek Orthodox life, including interviews with traveling alms-seekers, sheds light on European views of Greek decline under Ottoman rule as well as on the global ambitions of Lutheran reform"--

This Element develops and showcases a new methodological framework in which to study the connections between early modern travel writing and life- and self-writing. Turning the scholarly focus in the study of travel writing from eye-witnessing and proto-ethnography of foreign lands to the 'fashioned' and portrayed selves and 'inner worlds' of travellers – personal memory, autobiographical practices, and lived yet often heavily mediated travel experiences – it opens up perspectives to travel writing in its many modes, that extend both before and after 'lived' travels into their many pre- and afterlives in textual form. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century a large and complex English literature on the Ottoman Turks developed, characterised by its diversity in form, content, opinion and context. This was a literature in the sense of a large body of texts sharing a topic, written in a similar time and place and in similar context, but also in the sense of a discourse, sharing literary conventions, citing similar sources, recycling information, accepted?facts?, anecdotes and images and drawing upon the same authorities. I examine this literature from its sixteenth-century roots, tracing its growth at the turn of the seventeenth century and its development into a complex literature, influenced by English religious and political contexts as well as growing Anglo-Ottoman trade and diplomacy, until the dramatic changes brought by diminishing Ottoman power in Europe at the close of that century. I draw these sources together as a?literature?, by examining trends, chronological developments and connections between them, while on the other hand I focus upon the contexts of individual works and a nuanced reading of their representations of the Ottomans. Through this I seek to bring a broader and more balanced perspective on both English literature on the Ottomans as a whole and the diversity and complexity of the works of which it was comprised.

This Element develops and showcases a new methodological framework in which to study the connections between early modern travel writing and life- and self-writing. Turning the scholarly focus in the study of travel writing from eye-witnessing and proto-ethnography of foreign lands to the 'fashioned' and portrayed selves and 'inner worlds' of travellers - personal memory, autobiographical practices, and lived yet often heavily mediated travel experiences - it opens up perspectives to travel writing in its many modes, that extend both before and after 'lived' travels into their many pre- and afterlives in textual form. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This book traces the history of conflict and contact between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Ottoman Middle East prior to 1914.

Based on the account of an Ottoman ambassador's expedition to France in 1720, G"o, cek's study reveals the complex and differential impact these two societies had on each other.

A study of the musical discourse among Ottoman Greek Orthodox Christians during a complicated time for them in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the late Ottoman period (1856–1922), a time of contestation about imperial policy toward minority groups, music helped the Ottoman Greeks in Istanbul define themselves as a distinct cultural group. A part of the largest non-Muslim minority within a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire, the Greek Orthodox educated elite engaged in heated discussions about their cultural identity, Byzantine heritage, and prospects for the future, at the heart of which were debates about the place of traditional liturgical music in a community that was confronting modernity and westernization. Merih Erol draws on archival evidence from ecclesiastical and lay sources dealing with understandings of Byzantine music and history, forms of religious chanting, the life stories of individual cantors, and other popular and scholarly sources of the period. Audio examples keyed to the text are available online. “Merih Erol’s careful examination of the prominent church cantors of this period, their opinions on Byzantine, Ottoman and European musics as well as their relationship with both the Patriarchate and wealthy Greeks of Istanbul presents a detailed picture of a community trying to define their national identity during a transition. . . . Her study is unique and detailed, and her call to pluralism is timely.” —Mehmet Ali Sanlikol, author of The Musician Mehters “Overall, the book impresses me as a sophisticated work that avoids the standard nationalist views on the history of the Ottoman Greeks.” —Risto Pekka Pennanen, University of Tampere, Finland “This book is a great contribution to the fields of historical ethnomusicology, religious studies, ethnic studies, and Ottoman and Greek studies. It offers timely research during a critical period for ethnic minorities in the Middle East in general and Christians in particular as they undergo persecution and forced migration.” —Journal of the American Academy of Religion