ABOUT US
BOOKS
SUBJECTS
SERIES
PUBLISH WITH US
CONTACT
LOGIN
PROFILE
ORDERS
LOGOUT
0
vikramjain@sanctumbooks.com
×
x
x
LOGIN
PROFILE
ORDERS
LOGOUT
x
ABOUT US
BOOKS
SUBJECTS
SERIES
PUBLISH WITH US
CONTACT
Home:
Subjects:
History, Culture & Politics
Islam & Sufism
Middle Eastern Studies
x
Front Cover
Back Cover
Under Osman’s Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History (paperback)
Author:
Alan Mikhail
ISBN:
9789376540150
Binding:
Paperback
Pages:
352 with 17 halftones and 6 tables
Size:
16 x 24 cm
FORTHCOMING
About the Book
Osman, the founder of the Ottoman Empire, had a dream in which a tree sprouted from his navel. As the tree grew, its shade covered the earth; as Osman’s empire grew, it, too, covered the earth. This is the most widely accepted foundation myth of the longest-lasting empire in the history of Islam, and offers a telling clue to its unique legacy. Underlying every aspect of the Ottoman Empire’s epic history—from its founding around 1300 to its end in the twentieth century—is its successful management of natural resources.
Under Osman’s Tree
analyzes this rich environmental history to understand the most remarkable qualities of the Ottoman Empire—its longevity, politics, economy, and society. The early modern Middle East was the world’s most crucial zone of connection and interaction. Accordingly, the Ottoman Empire’s many varied environments affected and were affected by global trade, climate, and disease. From down in the mud of Egypt’s canals to up in the treetops of Anatolia, Alan Mikhail tackles major aspects of the Middle East’s environmental history: natural resource management, climate, human and animal labor, energy, water control, disease, and politics. He also points to some of the ways in which the region’s dominant religious tradition, Islam, has understood and related to the natural world. Marrying environmental and Ottoman history,
Under Osman’s Tree
offers a bold new interpretation of the past five hundred years of Middle Eastern history.
About the Author
Alan Mikhail
Alan Mikhail is the Chace Family Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of six books that have been translated into ten languages, including
The Animal in Ottoman Egypt
and
Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History
and the editor of
Water on Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa
.
Editorial Reviews
“The Ottoman Empire was an ecosystem.” Thus, historian Mikhail concludes his rich, part socioeconomic, part environmental history of early modern Ottoman Egypt. Filling a hole in the historiography with a breathtaking array of cases, themes, and illustrations, Mikhail offers an ideal pedagogical tool for all levels of university courses. He digs into his analytical tool box and reveals an Egypt deeply integrated into the larger world, both economically and ecologically. From accounts of droughts and bubonic plagues to the aftereffects of volcanic eruptions in Iceland, Mikhail’s contribution opens a new prism through which to study human interactions with nature. Perhaps the most valuable contribution is the author’s charting of the vibrant synthesis of life patterns between peasants, local landowners, and imperial governors and the ebbs and flows of the natural life upon which the Ottoman Empire’s wealthiest province depended. Add to the mix the equally complex (sometimes deadly) relationship Egyptians necessarily had with beasts of burden, rats, and fleas, all sharing the fate of the temperamental seasonal flooding of the Nile, and this book makes for an outstanding addition to any library. Essential.”
—
Choice
“In presenting the early modern Ottoman regime as relatively benign—at least environmentally benign—Alan Mikhail is upsetting a commonly held view of Ottoman rule as singularly destructive and backward looking. . . . In fact, by using the examples of Egyptian food exports to different parts of the Empire—most notably to the Hijaz—and timber imports into Egypt from Anatolia, Professor Mikhail shows how provinces were interdependent and that the centre–periphery model is misleading. Watching the author demolish such preconceptions is one of the many pleasures of reading this book. In making a notable contribution to environmental history, from Nile water, to mud, to animals, crops, and finally to humans, Professor Mikhail also helps us to understand how the Ottoman Empire worked as a political system.”
—
Metascience
“
Under Osman’s Tree
frames the Ottoman Empire as an ecosystem. By emphasizing the complex relationships between imperial power and nature, Mikhail introduces a dizzying range of human and nonhuman actors, demonstrating how animals, water, silt, microbes, trees, and volcanoes might recast more traditional readings of sultans, bureaucrats, and peasants. . . . Mikhail offers another trailblazing contribution to the burgeoning field of Middle Eastern environmental history. It is a welcome addition to advanced undergraduate and graduate syllabi, laying out an ambitious agenda for colleagues working on Middle Eastern and global environmental histories.”
—
Environmental History
“Certainly the best work ever on Ottoman environmental history. Brings the Middle East into the global picture in as comprehensive a way as can possibly be imagined.”
—Roger Owen, Harvard University
“This is an outstanding book, carefully written and timely. Mikhail has brought the tools of environmental history to bear in this fresh telling of Egyptian, Ottoman, and Middle Eastern history. He focuses on the last five hundred years, after Egypt became the crown jewel of the Ottoman Empire, and masterfully embeds his history into the complex ecologies surrounding the Nile River, an enduring source of both life and cruel natural disasters. With thoughtful thematic categories driving his analysis, Mikhail makes an important contribution not just to Middle Eastern history, but to how a new generation of historians must view the relationship between people and the changing face of our planet, particularly during the new uncertainty of the Anthropocene Epoch.”
—Brett L. Walker, Montana State University
“Focusing on early modern Egypt, Mikhail puts power and knowledge in the Ottoman Empire in conversation with environmental relations—the movement of water, the accumulation of silt, the distribution of food, the need for wood for ships, the spread of disease, the possession and use of animals as sentient commodities, climatic fluctuations, and fundamental changes in the organization of human and animal labor. The result is a reinterpretation of the Ottoman Empire as an ecosystem that expands the possibilities of environmental history.”
—Richard White, Stanford University
“With this rich and accessible study of the relationship between human communities and their natural environment in Ottoman Egypt, Mikhail offers us an original interpretation of Ottoman history. Rarely does a new book make us rethink completely our assumptions about a subject matter we think we know well.
Under Osman’s Tree
does precisely that, and as such it is a worthy successor to Fernand Braudel’s magisterial classic, The Mediterranean.””
—Resat Kasaba, University of Washington
“The author is a gifted storyteller, and he spins his sources into a vivid and often colorful portrait of eighteenth-century Egyptian society.... Through his rich source-base, moreover, Mikhail masterfully demonstrates the value of a methodological approach to the history of empires that reaches beyond imperial archives and the scope of the central administration. The book’s greatest strengths lie not only in its nuanced depiction of rural life and its critical update of Middle Eastern historiography, but also in its composition.”
—
English Historical Review
Customer Reviews
Books of related interest
Under Osman’s Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and...
God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, an...
God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, an...
Religion, Orientalism and Modernity: Mahdi Movemen...
The Book of Monasteries
Kings and Dervishes: Sufi World Renunciation and t...
Parting Gifts of Empire: Palestine and India at th...
Bedouin Poets of the Nafūd Desert
The Requirements of the Sufi Path: A Defense of th...
Sufism and Power in the Ottoman Empire: The Writin...
A Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poet...
Muslim Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Diversity and...
The House of the Satrap: The Making of the Ancient...
The Rules of Logic
The Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Str...
The Discourses: Reflections on History, Sufism, Th...
Shelter for the Night: On Afghanistan, Language, a...
From Ravidas and Nanak to Waris Shah: Texts, Langu...
Everyday Islamic Law and the Making of Modern Sout...
City of Lyrics: Ordinary Poets and Islamicate Popu...
The Divine Names: A Mystical Theology of the Names...
Myth and History in Ancient Persia: The Achaemenid...
Islamic Law on Trial: Contesting Colonial Power in...
The Center of the World: A Global History of the P...
Reading across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Lit...
Emotion, Mission, Architecture: Building Hospitals...
The Politics of Muslim Identities in Asia
A Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poet...
In Deadly Embrace: Arabic Hunting Poems
Exile and the Nation: The Parsi Community of India...
The Breakup of India and Palestine: The Causes and...
Serendipitous Translations: A Sourcebook on Sri La...
The Essence of Reality: A Defense of Philosophical...
Warriors after War: Indian and Pakistani Retired M...
The Discovery of Insulin: Special Centenary Editio...
Fictionalising Trauma: The Aesthetics of Marguerit...
License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passp...
Comparative Constitutional Traditions
The Road to Empire: The Political Education of Kha...
Songs of Home & Loss: Reconstructions of a Tam...
Against Heritage: The Reinvention of Traditional F...
A Story of Ambivalent Modernization in Bangladesh ...
"The Ethos of Britain": Delderfieldʼs Sw...
Federalism and Second Chambers: Regional Represent...
Sufis and Sharīʿa: The Forgotten School of Mercy
The Greater Second World War: Global Perspectives
The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytell...
The Rise of the Modern West: Europe, 1400-1599
South Asian Technospaces
Contemporary Global Governance: Multipolarity vs N...
L’idee separatiste dans la presse anglo-musulmane ...
Rule-extension Strategies in Ancient India: Ritual...
Across the Color Line: Indians, Blacks, and Landsc...
Taking Territory: The Persistence of Conquest Sinc...
Word, Chant, and Song: Spiritual Transformation in...
Global South Rising?: BRICS and the Reconfiguratio...
Locating Hybridity: Creole, Identities and Body Po...
Female Militants in South Asia: Fighters and Facil...
Negotiating Historical Change Hindu Style
Turning Wind into Power Effects of Stakeholder Net...
The Guardian of the Hills: Devata Culture and Livi...
Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal: François Bern...
Tracing the Contours of the Unseen: Sufi Poetry, M...
Pakistan and the New Nuclear Taboo: Regional Deter...
Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature...
Ancient India: Insights into Social & Economic...
Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work ...
Machiavelli on War
Visions of Empire and Other Imaginings: Cinema, Ir...
After Belsen: Christian Encounters with Holocaust ...
Democracy’s Second Act: Why Politics Needs the Pub...
The Literary Thing: History, Poetry and the Making...
Media, Knowledge, and Contemporary India
Strategic Dynamics and Nuclear Weapons Proliferati...
Haram in the Harem: Domestic Narratives in India a...
Life at a Distance: Medicine and Nationalism in In...
Nationhood and Identity in Indian Adaptations of S...
Decolonization and the Struggle for National Liber...
Earthquake Disaster Management: Focussing on the E...
Motilal Tejawat: Life and Work
The Failure of Islamic Modernism?: Syed Ameer Ali&...
Old Stacks, New Leaves: The Arts of the Book in So...
Un-Disciplining Literature: Literature, Law, and C...
Literary Orientalism, Postcolonialism, and Univers...
Education, Labour & Science: Perspectives for ...
Insecurities of Expulsion: Afro-Asian Entanglement...
Independent Kashmir: An Incomplete Aspiration
Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labo...
The Supreme Refuge, Volume 2: History, Myths, Wors...
South Asian Technospaces - Hardcover
Artificially Intelligent: The Very Human Story of ...
Against Heritage: The Reinvention of Traditional F...
Asians ahead after the first round?: Indo-British ...
US Hegemony Global Ambitions and Decline- Emergenc...
The Life of Shariʿa: A Comparative Anthropology of...
Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient In...
Literarische Selbstverortung als historische Handl...
Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature...
A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt an...
J.S. Mill’s Encounter with India
Fictions of 1947: Representations of Indian Decolo...
Origin and Growth of Satī in Early Medieval India:...
Outsiders and Insiders: Perspectives of Third Worl...
The Rise of a Multipolar World: Papers presented a...
Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of World Histor...
A Post-Liberal Peace: How Emergent Powers Are Resh...
Education and Training in a Globalized World Socie...
Medieval Worlds: Origins, Nature, Debates, and Exc...
The Physics of Capitalism: How a New Political Eco...
Globalisation and the Changing Face of Port Infras...
Lineages of the Global City: Occult Modernism and ...
Iran to India: The Shansabānīs of Afghanistan, c. ...
Economic Dimensions of Buddhism in Early India: Fr...
Between Life and Death: Governing Populations in t...
The Retrospective Raj: Medicine, Literature and Hi...
Determinants, Consequences and Perspectives of Lan...
The Political Economy of Education in South Asia: ...
Sacred Sovereignty: Kingship, Heritage, and Politi...
The Rise of the Modern West: Europe, 1600-1799
Indian Agents: Rulers of the Reserves
Ireland: Looking East
Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves: America and the I...
The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali
An Environmental History of Postcolonial North Ind...
Killing in the Name of the State: State-Sponsored ...
Remembering Empire: Power, Memory, & Place in ...
The Supreme Refuge, Volume 2: History, Myths, Wors...
The Socialist Opposition in Nehruvian India 1947–1...
Meditation, Vol. I: History And Present Time
Die Rani von Jhansi – Rebellin wider Willen: Biogr...
Palimpsests Past and Present: The Sufis and Sultan...
Images of India in British Fiction: Anglo-India vs...
Women, Wealth and the State in Early Colonial Indi...
The Japanese Image of India: From the Heavenly Wor...
Civilisation, Education and School in Ancient and ...
India in the World since 1947: National and Transn...
ADD REVIEW
Review Title
Review
Reviewer Name
Email