British Society for Middle Eastern Studies

Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery by Palmira Brummett
Review by: Salih Ozbaran
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Nov., 1996), pp. 208-209
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/195538 .
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REVIEWS: GENERAL

Shi'i imams, was to prove an obstacle to the spreadingof his influence in the Shi'i world
after his death. Another obstacle was his emphasis on the relationship between the
master and the disciple, which inevitably weakened his influence once he had died.
Yet his writings on the key concepts of Sufism are remarkablefor their perspicacity.
One of the most distinctive aspects of his thoughtis the difficulty involved in following
the mystical path. Mystical experience is easily capable of unbalancingthe practitioner,
and there are many forms of diversion from the path. Simnani was keenly aware of the
dangers of mysticism, and he insisted throughouton the importanceof obeying the law
and carryingout faithfully the rituals of religion. There is no scope for humanbeings to
become united with God since a contingent being cannot be united with a necessary
being. On the contrary,the most that human beings can do is to mirror God through
personalperfection,which is only attainableat the end of the mystical path. The ultimate
mystical truthsare entirely in accordancewith Sunni normativism,since human beings
as the most perfect of God's creations have to act as his representativeson earth, as
custodians of the sacred trust. These views came to have great influence on the
Naqshbandiyyasect, especially through their impact on Ahmad-i Sirhindi.
In his scholarly and well-written book Elias provides a lot of detail on topics such as
the relationship of God and the world, the spiritual body and the mirror of God, the
nature of subtle substances and the role of emanation in Sufism. There is an extended
and useful discussion of how Simnani interpretsthe key Sufi concepts and religious
ideas. He also provides an account of his works, and of works on him, together with a
discussion of the precise cultural and political context within which he operated. His
conclusion, that the importance of Simnani for his successors lies in his ability to
reconcile the social and spiritualdimensions of humanexperience within a theory of the
natureof existence, is plausible. Such a theory sees the spiritualand the materialworlds
as linked, but neither as reducible to the other. It is incumbentupon the Sufi, then, to
concentrateon the mystical path, but this should not involve neglect of the obligations
which attend life in the world of generation and corruption.Similarly, although one
should carry out one's duties as a member of a community, as a human being, this
should not be at the expense of the capacity to seek deeper understandingof the nature
of reality. It is not surprisingthat this powerful idea came to have many adherentsin the
Islamic world.
LIVERPOOLJOHN MOORES UNIVERSITY

OLIVER LEAMAN

OTTOMAN SEAPOWERAND LEVANTINE DIPLOMACY IN THE AGE OF DISBRUMMETT.

COVERY. By PALMIRA
(SUNY Series in the Social and Economic History

of the Middle East.) New York, State University of New York Press, 1994. xvi, 285 pp.
2 maps, 7 plates. $19.95.
The first thing which strikes the reader about this book is the author's reminderof the
necessity for cooperation and universal understandingcaused by the expansion of
Western historiographyinto Ottoman history, and the failure of both scholarly and
popularwriting in the 'dominant'world to appreciatethe natureof Ottomanexpansion,
seapower, and integration into the Euro-Asian commercial patterns in 'the Age of
Discovery'.
The aim of this study is to tell the story not from the 'overwhelmingly structured'
point of view prompted by the term 'the Age of Discovery'. It is rather to have 'a
208

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REVIEWS: GENERAL

differentworld map, centringnot on Lisbon, Antwerp,Amsterdam,Paris or London, but

on Istanbul, Cairo and Tabriz' (p. 2). The objectives of Ottoman expansion were the
same as those of the Europeans: wealth, power, glory, religious legitimation-the
rhetoricof holy war cannot suffice to articulatethe image of the Ottomanempire in the
sixteenth century.
Professor Brummett has every reason to object that Western historiography has
frequentlykept the Ottomanempire within the category of 'the other', with little attempt
made to understandthe balance of power in the Euro-Asiam sphere. Her approachis
welcome, following in the wake of historians such as Inalcik, Orhonlu, Faroqhi,
Wallerstein,Godino, Hess and Wesseling, who have includedthe Ottomanempire within
the competition for world economic power and have avoided the stereotyping which
contrastsa 'static Orient' with a 'dynamic Occident'. Her book addressesthe following
themes: reassessment of the impact of Ottoman naval development on the world
economy; revision of analyses of Ottomaneconomic policy; examinationof the details
of participationby the Ottomanstate, its merchants,and askeri (military-administrative)
class in trade. She raises-rather than answers-crucial questions, such as: how was the
state concerned with marketsand could it increase profits?What were supply, demand,
prices, raw materials,capital, products,technology, organization,mercantileinstitutions,
profit?What was the level of consumption,of agriculturalsurpluses, and the extent of
commandeering?What was the relationshipbetween agricultureand commercialcapital?
Who exploited surpluses and how? What was the extent of pasha, notable family, and
state agents' involvement as merchants(pp. 18-19)?
How far has the authorbeen able to advance understandingof these topics? In this
reviewer's opinion, it is very difficult to give sensible answers to such questions without
exploiting the relevant raw material. It is a pity that she has not gone through the
Ottoman archives in Istanbul, in particularfor cadastral surveys and account books,
budgets and their associated records, ruus appointmentregisters, and the muhimme
copies of orders and firmans issued by the imperial council concerning the southern
provinces of the empire. However, it is perhapsunfair to criticize the authortoo much
in this respect, for her work deals mainly with the first two decades of the sixteenth
century, for which Ottoman archival records are relatively sparse. She does seem to
have used chronicles,but these do not include the kind of data most useful for economic
and commercialpurposes-in this case one needs statisticaldata to comment on longue
duree activities. She also makes extensive (though bordering on excessive) use of
Marino Sanuto's I Diarii. In her frequentreferencesto the rest of the sixteenth century,
Brummett seeks to explain commercial life in its wider dimensions. In this context,
she might usefully have used work incorporating new Ottoman archival data, for
instance Cengiz Orhonlu on Ottoman expansion in the southern seas, Idris Bostan on
Ottomannaval organization,V. J. Parry on Ottoman warfare, and Suraiya Faroqhi on
the hajj.

Brummett successfully challenges 'the notion that the sixteenth-centuryOttoman

empire was merely a reactive economic entity, driven by the impulse to territorial
conquest' (p. 175); her work is strong on comparativeanalysis of Ottomandiplomatic,
political and commercial relations with their Safavid, Mamluk and European (mainly
Venetian and Portuguese)neighbours.Her work deserves an importantplace in historiographical consideration of the Ottoman empire, though it needs further detail to
illustrate and prove the claims which have been put forward throughoutthis book.
DOKUZ EYLUL UNIVERSITY, IZMIR

SALIH OZBARAN
209

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