The Origins of Ottoman History

with Rudi Lindner

hosted by Joshua White & Maryam Patton

| Among the most murky periods of the Ottoman dynasty's six-century history is the period of its very emergence in medieval Anatolia. In this episode, we talk to Rudi Lindner about his attempts to understand this early period of Ottoman history and the development of hypotheses and methods concerning the investigation of Ottoman origins over the past century of scholarship. We also reflect on what decades of research and teaching have taught Lindner about sources for history and the questions they require us to ask.

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Among the most murky periods of the Ottoman dynasty's six-century history is the period of its very emergence in medieval Anatolia. In this episode, we talk to Rudi Lindner about his attempts to understand this early period of Ottoman history and the development of hypotheses and methods concerning the investigation of Ottoman origins over the past century of scholarship. We also reflect on what decades of research and teaching have taught Lindner about sources for history and the questions they require us to ask.

Contributor Bios

	Rudi Lindner is Professor Emeritus of History and Astronomy at the University of Michigan, and the author of the books, Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia, published by Indiana University Press in 1983, and Explorations in Ottoman Prehistory, published by the University of Michigan Press in 2007. For more, see Office Hours with Rudi.
	Joshua M. White is Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean (Stanford University Press, 2017).
	Maryam Patton is a PhD candidate at Harvard University in the joint History and Middle Eastern Studies program. She is interested in early modern cultural exchanges, and her dissertation studies cultures of time and temporal consciousness in the Eastern Mediterranean during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Credits

Episode No. 511
Release Date: 20 August 2021
Recording Location: Charlottesville, VA / Ann Arbor, MI / Oxford, UK
Sound production by Chris Gratien
Music: Piano Sonata in B-flat major, D.960 (Schubert, Franz) performed by Randolph Hokanson
Bibliography courtesy of Rudi Lindner and Joshua White

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	Cemal Kafadar	464 6/29/20	Between Past and Present, Part 1
	Zeynep Oktay Uslu	359 4/20/18	Dervish Piety and Alevism in Late Medieval Anatolia

Select Bibliography

For more on the life and career of Rudi Lindner, check out the blog Office Hours with Rudi

Arnakis, George.  Hoi prōtoi Othōmanoi: symvolē eis to provlēma tēs ptōseōs tou Hellēnismou tēs Mikras Asias (1282-1337).  Athens, 1947. 

Beldiceanu, Irene.  “La conquete de la Bithynie maritime, etape decisive dans la fondation de l'etat ottoman.”  In Klaus Belke, Friedrich Hild, Johannes Koder, and Peter Soustal, eds., Byzanz als Raum (Vienna: Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), 21-34.

———.  “L'installation des Ottomans en Bithynie.”  In Bernard Geyer and Jacques Lefort, eds, La Bithynie au Moyen Age (Paris: Lethellieux, 2003), 351-374.

Kastritsis, Dimitris. An Early Ottoman History: The Oxford Anonymous Chronicle (Bodleian Library, Ms Marsh 313). Liverpool: Liverpool  University Press, 2019.

Heywood, Colin. “The 1337 Bursa Inscription and Its Interpreters.” Turcica 36 (2004): 215–30.

Imber, Colin. “The Legend of Osman Gazi” In The Ottoman Emirate, 1300-1389. Edited by Elizabeth Zachariadou. (Herakleion: University of Crete Press, 1993). pp. 67-76.

———. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

———. “What Does Ghazi Actually Mean?”.” In The Balance of Truth: Essays in Honour of Professor Geoffrey Lewis, 165–78. Istanbul: Isis Press, 2010.

İnalcık, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300-1600. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973.

Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig. Kaiser Friedrich Der Zweite. Berlin: Georg Bondi, 1928. English translation by E.O. Lorimer (New York: Smith, 1931).

Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad. Les origines de l’empire Ottoman. Paris: Boccard, 1935.

Köprülü, Mehmet Fuat, trans. Gary Leiser. The Origins of the Ottoman Empire. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1992.

Lindner, Rudi Paul. Explorations in Ottoman Prehistory. University of Michigan Press, 2007.

———. Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia. Bloomington, 1983.

———. “Seljuk Mints and Silver Mines.” Turcica 41 (2009): 363.

———. “What Was a Nomadic Tribe?” Comparative Studies in Society and History 24, no. 4 (1982): 689–711.

———. “Wittek and Köprülü.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 26, no. 1–2 (2016): 333–40.

Ménage, Victor Louis. “A Survey of the Early Ottoman Histories, with Studies on Their Textual Problems and Their Sources.” PhD Thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), 1962.

Ménage, Victor Louis, and Colin Imber. Ottoman Historical Documents: the Institutions of an Empire, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021.

Tawney, Richard Henry. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study. Penguin Books, 1922.

Vryonis, Speros. The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971.

Wittek, Paul. edited by Colin Heywood, The Rise of the Ottoman Empire: Studies in the History of Turkey, Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries, London: Routledge, 2012 (reprint of Wittek's 1938 study with additional articles and materials)