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Under Osman’s Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History (hardcover)

Author:Alan Mikhail
ISBN:9789376540143
Binding:Hardcover
Pages:352 with 17 halftones and 6 tables
Size:16 x 24 cm
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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



“This is a tremendous contribution to the fields of South Asian and religious studies, as it considers a massive amount of material from diverse sources across Asia to discuss the early development of the Great Goddess Durgā within the South Asian context. By placing Durgā at the center of this work, it does something that no other book has done to date, which is to evaluate the literary and textual traditions along with the extant imagery and co-relating the two, which is a very difficult task.”
—Madhuvanti Ghose, Art Institute of Chicago
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