Which of the following aspects of the international situation in early sixteenth century Southwest Asia is most relevant to understanding Sultan Selims letter?

from Part II - Historical Orders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 December 2019

Christian Reus-SmitAffiliation:

University of Queensland

• Chapter

Summary

Conflicting narratives exist about Ottoman cultural practices. On the one hand, the Empire is lauded for its tolerance of cultural difference, with the famed ‘millet system’ upheld as a model of institutionalized cultural recognition. This sits side by side, however, with another view, of an order ruled by repressive Islamists. This chapter observes that widely different interpretations of Ottoman attitudes to diversity are possible because the empire was not static in this regard over the course of its more than six-hundred-year-old history. As with the modern international order, Ottoman history is marked by successive diversity regimes, in which a generally ‘latitudinarian’ approach to the management of diversity was punctuated by notable periods of cultural closure and repression. The chapter focuses on two such periods in the ‘long’ sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. In both periods, the shift to greater cultural intolerance and repression was propelled by institutional trends towards greater state centralization, interpolity completion involving external actors with ties to internal groups, and a governing (or legitimating) ideology viewing heterogeneity as a threat. In the sixteenth century it was heterodox Muslim communities that were targeted, with the empire thoroughly 'Sunnitised'. In the nineteenth century, by contrast, it was non-Muslim communities that bore the brunt of oppression, culminating most notably in the Armenian genocide of 1915.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2020

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“Throughout its history, Central Asia has provided the ancient civilized empires on its borders with newShahs, Sultans, or Sons of Heaven. These periodic invasions by the nomads of the steppe, whose khansascended the thrones of Changan, Luoyang, Kaifeng, or Beijing*, of Isfahan or Tabriz**, Delhi orConstantinople, became one of the geographic laws of history. But there was another, opposing law whichbrought about the slow absorption of the invaders by the ancient civilized lands. The civilizations of Chinaand Persia, though conquered, would in the long run vanquish their conquerors, intoxicating them with thepleasures of settled life, lulling them to sleep, and assimilating them culturally. Often, only fifty years aftera conquest, the culturally Sinicized or Persianized former barbarian would be the first to stand guard overhis adopted civilization and protect it against fresh nomadic onslaughts.”*capital cities of various Chinese dynasties**capital cities of various Persian dynastiesRené Grousset, French historian of Central Asia, The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia, 1939The general pattern of nomadic conquest followed by the assimilation of the conquerors into thecultures of the conquered societies was most clearly expressed in which of the followingdevelopments in the period circa 1250–1450?

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