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Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire
by
For six hundred years, the Ottoman Empire swelled and declined. Islamic, martial, civilized, and tolerant, it advanced in three centuries from the dusty foothills of Anatolia to rule on the Danube and the Nile; at its height, Indian rajahs and the kings of France beseeched the empire's aid. In its last three hundred years the empire seemed ready to collapse, a prodigy of s
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Paperback, 368 pages
Published
January 1st 2003
by Picador
(first published 1998)
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Patricia
Originally in Great Britain and thereafter in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa....
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Start your review of Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire

Apr 10, 2020
Jeffrey Keeten
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
nonfiction,
turkey
”This book is about a people who do not exist. The word ‘Ottoman’ does not describe a place. Nobody nowadays speaks the language.
For six hundred years the Ottoman Empire swelled and declined. It advanced from a dusty beylik in the foothills of Anatolia at the start of the fourteenth century to conquer the relics and successors of Byzantium, including the entire Balkan peninsula from the Adriatic to the Black Sea, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and the so-called Principalities of Wallachia and Moldav ...more
For six hundred years the Ottoman Empire swelled and declined. It advanced from a dusty beylik in the foothills of Anatolia at the start of the fourteenth century to conquer the relics and successors of Byzantium, including the entire Balkan peninsula from the Adriatic to the Black Sea, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and the so-called Principalities of Wallachia and Moldav ...more

I chose this book as I wanted an introductory overview on this peculiar and fascinating polity, with the objective to gain a better knowledge of one of the main players in Middle Eastern and Balkan history, a multi-ethnic and complex Empire so often unfairly neglected or stereotyped in history books.
I must regretfully state that my objectives have been only partially fulfilled, and that this book has been a bit of a hit-and-miss reading experience.
I perfectly understand that the task of conden ...more
I must regretfully state that my objectives have been only partially fulfilled, and that this book has been a bit of a hit-and-miss reading experience.
I perfectly understand that the task of conden ...more

I just finished this dark and stormy popular historical book about the Ottoman Empire and I have to say that within fifteen pages of reading it I was utterly confused! Confused because studying Ottoman history for more than a decade now, and having lived in Turkey (and born there!), I didn't find anything Ottoman Turkish about it! And then that confusion I mentioned turned to anger! And then I was enraged!!! The last time I felt this feeling of injustice was several years ago when I read Glenn B
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Sep 02, 2014
Jonfaith
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
flat_circle_of_lies_and_despair,
medieval
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things . Machiavelli
Of course Niccolo also said that conquering the Ottomans would be most difficult, but afterwards rather easy to hold or occupy. It is good being glib. I violated my latest reading plan over the holiday weekend.
Ottomans did not, on the whole, engage in trade; they worked in administration; their minorities, Gr ...more
Of course Niccolo also said that conquering the Ottomans would be most difficult, but afterwards rather easy to hold or occupy. It is good being glib. I violated my latest reading plan over the holiday weekend.
Ottomans did not, on the whole, engage in trade; they worked in administration; their minorities, Gr ...more

Perhaps one of the reasons we are having so many problems relating to the Middle East and the Muslim world is that we choose to avert our gaze from it. Practically no one of my acquaintance knows anything about the Ottoman Empire, which lasted some 600 years. Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire by Jason Goodwin is an excellent place to start. It ranks with the classic The Ottoman Centuries by Lord Kinross, which takes a more traditional chronologically structured approach to t
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There's a lot of interesting detail here. Unfortunately, it's incredibly confusing. The author seems to believe that his readers are already intimately familiar with many of the people, battles, titles, etc of the Ottomans (in which case, why read a survey history book on the topic?). Since many of the sultans have the same name, this becomes extra confusing. Worse, there's only a vague nod towards linearity. Often, the century being discussed will jump from something in the 1500s in one paragra
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This book is sort of like a curiosity cabinet of travelogue and ethno-history, which is both its strength and weakness. You'll learn about obsessive clock-collecting, tulip madness, Istanbul's stray dogs, the sultan's silver slippers, madness and drownings and strangulation. Old-fashioned generalizations of ethnic character border on political incorrectness in a fun-but-wrong 19th century way. It's a theatrical, moody, stage-setting book. It's a zeitgeist book, more a diorama than a dissertation
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Never caught fire for me - the meandering style made it too difficult to see the connections between people and places that make history interesting to me. I really wanted to like this one more, as I enjoy Goodwin's fiction tremendously.
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From its beginnings as a nondescript tribe dwelling in the foothills of Anatolia to the dazzling victory over the Byzantines at Constantinople, the Empire of Osman (Ottoman) was the powerhouse of its day. It was an empire that adapted to the countries it overran, so that a day in the marketplace at Istanbul would find Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Jews, Serbs, Moors and others mingling together, regardless of race or language.
"There is a great difference between our loss and yours. You ...more
"There is a great difference between our loss and yours. You ...more

One of the best written histories I 've read. Very writerly. I sometimes got lost in the names but that's not the fault of the book. It probably would have helped if I knew more about the subject though I wouldn't discourage someone from reading it because they didn't. 9/09
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Jason Goodwin, previously a travel writer and later a novelist, turned in a very successful history. Don't expect footnotes, historiography, or debates about what really happened. This isn't the history you read in college. It belongs to that nearly lost genre, literary history. Its purpose is to impress on the reader with the splendor, magnificence, and difference of bygone societies and personalities. This Goodwin does spectacularly.
I was lucky enough to read this book in Istanbul. These stra ...more
I was lucky enough to read this book in Istanbul. These stra ...more

May 30, 2013
Pete daPixie
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
history-ottoman
Almost seven hundred years of history here, and most of it completely new to me. 'Lords of the Horizons', published in 1998, chronicles the astonishing rise and fall of the Ottoman empire, from the late thirteenth century to the end of World War One.
From the birth of Osman Bey in 1281, which set a spark around the Sea of Marmara to engulf Byzantium in a Muslim fire that roared across the Dardanelles to the Adriatic, and in less than a century was consuming the Balkans. After Constantinople fell ...more
From the birth of Osman Bey in 1281, which set a spark around the Sea of Marmara to engulf Byzantium in a Muslim fire that roared across the Dardanelles to the Adriatic, and in less than a century was consuming the Balkans. After Constantinople fell ...more

The best short overview of the Ottomans I have read. Very lively and full of fascinating bits of information, it makes the rise and decline of the empire seem like an exciting romp, and is not without humour. The army had a regiment of madmen, for example, who were used as cannon fodder in the front line, ‘because they didn’t mind’. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent fell in love with a blonde slave girl from the Caucasus called Roxana, and slept only with her until the day she died. Highly recomme
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I'm so sorry for Mr. Goodwin. I'm sure the man honestly loves the ottomans. But apparently he doesn't love accurate research. There are several GLARING errors in this book. In addition, Goodwin mentions outlandish stories without even providing citations. It's amazing what lengths the author will go to shock or grab his readers attention. Apparently, coming up with a non-existent Quranic verse is one of these tactics (on pg. 55)
If you want to be entertained, do read this, but at the risk of also ...more
If you want to be entertained, do read this, but at the risk of also ...more

I read this book as an introduction to the Ottoman Empire, and as such I found it disappointing. Goodwin's approach is journalistic rather than historical, and jumps from theme to theme without giving any sort of chronological framework in which to mentally organize the information. Because I felt somewhat muddled as I was reading, I know I won't retain as much, although what was presented was quite interesting.
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There's something antiquated and romantic about the sprawling Ottoman Empire and its glacial decline through the centuries. It's what made Jason Goodwin's mystery novel "The Janissary Tree" so compelling. I wish I'd read this book first, though, as it provides much appreciated historical context to events, particularly the rise and fall of the janissary soldiers, which mirrored that of the samurai in Japan but ended much more violently.
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I really wanted to like this book, and, more importantly, to learn from it. The author, however, assumes that the reader has an intimate knowledge of the subject matter before coming to this... introductory book to the subject matter.
Worse, the writing oscillates between dull fact rambles and bordeline-racist stereotypical descriptions of a mystical 'other'. I am 100% sure there are better books on the Ottoman out there, and recommend finding those instead. ...more
Worse, the writing oscillates between dull fact rambles and bordeline-racist stereotypical descriptions of a mystical 'other'. I am 100% sure there are better books on the Ottoman out there, and recommend finding those instead. ...more

I want to understand this history. But, this book is just too detailed, too complicated. All of the names, battles, relationships, etc. are too foreign for me to take in all in one sitting. I need to find books about the various pieces, in shorter segments so that I can take it in. Actually, I need to buy this book so that I can read a chapter every now and then!

Some interesting snippets, but very dry reading and lacks thematic unity. You plow through pages and ask " What is the point?" Suffers from a fatal flaw that is a familiar complaint about history writing - it is boring.
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Would have benefited from thorough editing. Anecdotes repeated. Goodwin's love of language seems to have carried him away. Convoluted sentences and questionable adjectives. Sloppy. A travel writer's history.
...more

A poorly written book on a fascinating subject. I kept having to read sentences twice to discern their meaning, and the liberal use of Turkish words and terms (not all of which were in the glossary) didn't help. And yet... every now and then there was a flash of perspicacity, or even wit, that elucidated something perfectly. Go figure! Anyway, the Ottoman's system of governance was thoroughly unique and it's easy to underestimate their empire's influence on the modern world.
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Apart from the obvious fact of being Islamic, the former Ottoman Empire is fascinating in its method of operating on very different lines from the rest of Europe. Instead of a power structure based on feudalism and inheritance, it developed the “boy tribute” system which took “the finest Christian youths” into the Sultan’s service, up to the level of the Grand Vizier. The problem of jockeying for the one position which did involve succession was solved by legal fratricide: the Sultan’s heir, the
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Writing something that is as expansive as the history of the Ottoman Empire in 300 pages is a difficult task. Goodwin attempts this by thematic chapters that give bite-size information in a digestible form -- but even this format is difficult to master. The themes are not necessarily chronological and there is a lot of bouncing around between different time periods that at times is difficult to organize. The prose the author conducts is sometimes poetic, but other times plodding.
I finished the ...more
I finished the ...more

The worst part of the book is that although the author has an understanding of Ottoman history but is totally oblivious of even the most basic concepts of islam wich makes the reading difficult as the ottoman history is interwoven with religion. for e.g the book states that shias follow the progeny of Hazrat Ali (RA), and sunnis follow the progeny of Hazrat Fatimah (RA). The author doesnt even seem to know that the progeny of both is the same.
Most of the incidents and events are qouted in bare ...more
Most of the incidents and events are qouted in bare ...more

This was a maddening book. Not quite a popular history, more like a historical travel journal. Meandering through 600 years of Ottoman history. And I say history only because the later chapters talked (mostly) about things that happened later (mostly) than earlier chapters. It mixed beautiful evocations of past eras with countless non-sequitors and just plain head scratching sentences. Beautiful quips - "being Romanian was more a profession than a nationality" - that had nothing to do with the p
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Jason Goodwin's latest book is YASHIM COOKS ISTANBUL: Culinary Adventures in the Ottoman Kitchen.
He studied Byzantine history at Cambridge University - and returned to an old obsession to write The Gunpowder Gardens or, A Time For Tea: Travels in China and India in Search of Tea, which was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Award. When the Berlin Wall fell, he walked from Poland to Istanbul to encoun ...more
He studied Byzantine history at Cambridge University - and returned to an old obsession to write The Gunpowder Gardens or, A Time For Tea: Travels in China and India in Search of Tea, which was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Award. When the Berlin Wall fell, he walked from Poland to Istanbul to encoun ...more
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