Borderlands in Islamic and Ottoman History

Scott Rank, Ph.D.

Fall 2015

Office hours:
by appointment

Borderlands in Islamic and Ottoman History

This course explores Islamic imperial history and the spread of Islam with a particular emphasis
on the Ottoman Empire. It steps away from historical narratives built around central governments and
focuses on frontier provinces and semiautonomous borderlands as cultural-social units with their own
goals, identities, and internal dynamics. It explores methodological and theoretical frameworks to
study borderlands, the borderlanders themselves, and the cultural, social, intellectual, and porous
religious boundaries of these contested spaces. We will study the diverse social groups that lived in
these borderlands, such as the the gazis and the akritai on the Ottoman-Byzantine border and Muslim
and Christian groups whose loyalties the Ottomans competed for with Christian imperial rivals in
Europe, Russia, and the wider Mediterranean world. This course will also focus on trans-imperial
figures of the late imperial age, whether Pan Turkist intellectuals or Muslim pilgrims from Bukhara
who passed through Istanbul on their way to Mecca and Medina. This course will focus on case studies
ranging from Andalusian Spain to Central Asia. Students will learn the concepts of conversion,
syncretism, and hybridity crucial to understanding inter-confessional contact zones, along
with literature on the concept of frontiers and borderlands." This course will compare and contrast
Empires especially early Islamic Empires, the Ottomans, and their Byzantine, Safavid/Qajjar, and
Russian rivals.
Grading: This course is focused on a presentation based on the readings and a final paper.
Your grade will be determined by the following: Discussion and participation (20%), presentation
(30%), and the final essay 20 pages (50%).
Textbook: A course package will be provided to all students. The reference book list for the course
covers a broad range of books that are listed in the syllabus below.
Essay deadlines: Students must turn in essays as indicated by the syllabus. If the essay is not turned in
at the beginning of class on the due date, the student will have an automatic 10% taken off the final
grade. Each subsequent date the essay is late results in an additional 5% decrease.
Academic Misconduct: The term academic misconduct includes all forms of student academic
misconduct wherever committed; illustrated by, but not limited to, cases of plagiarism and dishonest
practices in connection with written assignments and examinations. The instructor shall report all
instances of alleged academic misconduct to the Committee on Academic Misconduct. I have to report
any academic misconduct to the Committee. If you have any questions at all about what constitutes
plagiarism or about the consequences of academic misconduct, please come and talk to me.
Reserve Clause: I reserve the right to make changes in the syllabus when necessary to meet the
learning outcome objectives, to compensate for missed classes or schedule changes, or for similar
legitimate reasons. Students will be notified of any such changes to the syllabus in adequate time to
adjust to those changes.

WEEKLY READING SCHEDULE

Week One
Introduction
Week Two Frontiers in QuestionModels of Inquiry
--D. Power. Frontiers: Terms, Concepts, and the Historians of Medieval and Early Modern Europe, in
D. Power and N. Standen (eds.), Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700-1700 (London:
Macmillan Press, 1999), 1-12.
--D. Jones. The Significance of the Frontier in World History, History Compass 1/1 (2003), 1-3.
19 January:
--K. Pratt Ewing. Crossing Borders and Transgressing Boundaries: Metaphors for Negotiating
Multiple Identities, Ethos 26(2) 1998: 262-67
--C. Heywood. The Frontier in Ottoman History: Old Ideas and New Myths, in D. Power and N.
Standen (eds.), Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700-1700 (London: Macmillan Press,
1999), 228-250.

Unit 1: Arab-Byzantine Frontier 7th-13th Centuries

Week Three: Early Islamic Frontiers
--M. Bonner. Introduction: Byzantine-Arab Relations, in M. Bonner (ed.), Arab-Byzantine Relations
in Early Islamic Times (London: Ashgate Variorium, 2005), xiii-xliii (i.e., 30 pp.)
--J.F. Haldon and H. Kennedy. The Arab-Byzantine frontier in the 8th and 9th centuries: military
organization and society in the borderlands, in M. Bonner (ed.), Arab-Byzantine Relations in Early
Islamic Times (London: Ashgate Variorium, 2005), 141-178
--T. Sizgorich, Narrative and Community in Islamic Late Antiquity, Past & Present 185 (2004): 942 [ pdf]
Week Four: Cultural Exchange along the Arab-Byzantine Frontier
--S. Bashear. Polemics and Images of the 'Other': Apocalyptic and other materials on Early MuslimByzantine wars: a review of Arabic sources, in M. Bonner (ed.), Arab-Byzantine Relations in Early
Islamic Times (London: Ashgate Variorium, 2005, 181-215.

--A. M.H. Shboul. Byzantium and the Arabs: the image of the Byzantines as mirrored in Arabic
literature in M. Bonner (ed.), Arab-Byzantine Relations in Early Islamic Times (London: Ashgate
Variorium, 2005), 235-252 [ pdf]
--Digenis Akritas: The Two-Blood Border Lord, trans. By D.B. Hull (Athens, OH: Ohio University
Press, 1972), 1-71 (Books 1-5).

UNIT 2: The Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, 7th-15th Centuries

Week Five: The Iberian Peninsula as a Borderlandthe Challenges of Convivencia
--E.M. Moreno. The Creation of a Medieval Frontier: Islam and Christianity in the Iberian Peninsula,
Eighth to Eleventh Centuries in D. Power and N. Standen (eds.), Frontiers in Question: Eurasian
Borderlands, 700-1700 (London: Macmillan Press, 1999), 32-54.
--D. Nirenberg. Introduction and Chapter 5 Sex and Violence between Majority and Minority, in
his Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996), 3-17 and 127-165.
--S. Barton. Traitors to the Faith? Christian Mercenaries in al-Andalus and the Maghreb, 1100-1300,
in R. Collins and A. Goodman (eds.), Medieval Spain: Culture, Conflict, and Coexistence (Palgrave
Macmillan: 2002), 23-45.
Week Six: North Africa
--A. C. Hess. Ch. 1 The Ibero-African Frontier, Ch. 3 North Africa and the Atlantic, and Ch. 4
Islam Resurgent, in his The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African
Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978), 1-10 and 26-70.
--N. Z. Davis. Introduction: Crossings, Ch. 1 Living in the Land of Islam, Ch. 4 Between Africa
and Europe, Ch. 6 Between Islam and Christianity in her Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century
Muslim Between Worlds (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 3-54, 109-124, and 153-190.

UNIT 3: India and Bengal

Week Seven: Islamic Frontiers in Hindistan
--R. Eaton. Introduction, Ch. 3 Early Sufis of the Delta, Ch. 5 Mass Conversion to Islam:
Theories and Protagonists, Ch. 6 The Rise of Mughal Power, and Ch. 7 Mughal Culture and its
Diffusion, in his The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1996), xxi-xxvii, 71-94, 113-136, 137-158, and 159-193
--C. Schackle. Beyond Turk and Hindu: Crossing the Boundaries in Indo-Muslim Romance,

Introduction, in D. Gilmartin and B. Lawrence (eds.), Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious
Identities in Islamicate South Asia(Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 55-73.

UNIT 4: Ottoman Borderlands

Week Eight: Ottoman-Byzantine Frontier
--C. Kafadar. Introduction and Ch. 2 The Sources, in his Between Two Worlds: The Construction of
the Ottoman State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 1-19 and 60-117.
--D. Kastritis. Religious Affiliation and Political Alliances in the Ottoman Succession Wars of 14021413, in Medieval Encounters 13 (2007), 222-242.
Week Nine: Ottoman-Safavid (and Qajjar) Borderlands and Beyond
-- M. Dressler. Inventing Orthodoxy: Competing Claims for Authority and Legitimacy in the
Ottoman-Safavid Conflict. In Legitimizing the OrderThe Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power, edited
by H. Karateke and M. Reinkowski. 151-176. Leiden: Brill, 2005.
-- S. Ate. Introduction, Chapter V The Sheykh, the Shah, and the Sultan: Rebellion in the
Borderland, and Chapter VI The Aftermath of the Rebellion: Establishing the Shii States
Supremacy in his Empires at the Margin: Towards a History of the Ottoman-Iranian Borderland and
the Borderland Peoples, 1843-1881 (Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University, 2006), 1-31; 316-368
and 369-433.
Week Ten: The Ottoman-Habsburg-Venetian Borderlands
--G. Palfy. Ransom slavery along the Ottoman-Hungarian frontier in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, in G. David and P. Fodor (eds.), Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Early
Fifteenth Early Eighteenth Centuries) (Leiden: Brill Press, 2007), 35-84.
--W. Bracewell. Chapter 1 Introduction, Chapter 2 The Borders and Border Military Systems, and
Chapter 6 Legitimating Raiding: the Uskok Code, in her The Uskoks of Senj: Piracy, Banditry, and
Holy War in the Sixteenth-Century Adriatic (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1992), 1-18, 19-50, and 155175.
--N. Rothman. Interpreting Dragomans: Boundaries and Crossings in the Early Modern
Mediterranean, Comparative Studies in Society and History 51:4 (2009), 771-800.
Week Eleven: Christian-Muslim Religious Conversion in the Early-Modern Mediterranean
Tijana Krsti. Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the
Early Modern Ottoman Empire. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.

Natalie Rothman. Becoming Venetian: Conversion and Transformation in the Seventeenth-Century

Mediterranean, Mediterranean Historical Review Vol. 19, No. 2 (Dec. 2004): 39-75.
Week Twelve: The Ottoman-Russian Steppe Frontier
--M. Khodarkovsky, Introduction , Chapter 1 The Sociology of the Frontier, or Why Peace was
Impossible and Chapter 5 Concepts and Policies in the Imperial Borderlands, 1690s-1800, in
his Russias Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2002), 1-45 and 184-220.
--R. Crews. Empire and the Confessional State: Islam and Religious Politics in 19th Century
Russia, The American Historical Review, Vol. 108, No. 1 (February 2003), 50-83
Week Thirteen: Legal Borderlands in the Early-Modern/Modern Transition
Will Smiley. The Burdens of Subjecthood: The Ottoman State, Russian Fugitives, and Interimperial
Law, 1774-1869. IJMES 46 (2014): 73-93.
Ziad Fahmy. Jurisdictional Borderlands: Extraterritoriality and 'Legal Chameleons' in Precolonial
Alexandria, 1840-1870. CSSH 55, No. 2 (2013): 305-329.
Week Fourteen: Ottoman Borderlands in the Balkans and Middle East and the Transition from Empire
to Nation State
--E.J. Zrcher. The Young-Turks Children of the Borderlands?, in Ottoman Borderlands: Issues,
Personalities, and Political Changes (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2003), 275-287.
--I. Blumi. Thwarting the Ottoman Empire: Smuggling through the Empires New Frontiers in Yemen
and Albania, 1878-1910, in Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities, and Political
Changes (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2003), 255-276.
--S. Deringil, They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery: the Late Ottoman Empire and the
Post-Colonial Debate. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 2 (2003), 311-342.
FINAL ESSAY DUE