Hijra and forced migration from nineteenth-century Russia to the Ottoman Empire

The medical activities of the London Jews' Society in nineteenth-century Palestine.

By the end of the eighteenth century, Palestine's once busy medieval trade in medicinal substances and high standard of medical services had reached their nadir. The main reason for this was the prolonged and continuous decline of the Ottoman empire, in conjunction with serious insanitary conditions, poverty and ignorance, as well as a lack of public health facilities. In the absence of suffici...

Sports Lodges in the Ottoman Empire Depicted in the Travel Book (Seyahat-Name) of Evliya Çelebi

Background. Sport lodges are institutions that are responsible for providing athletes with accommodation, food and training. Sport lodges had the same tasks as today's sports clubs and played a vital role in the institutionalization and development of sports within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Evliya Çelebi is a prominent 17th century traveler. During his lifetime, he traveled throughout ...

Women's bodies, demography, and public health: abortion policy and perspectives in the Ottoman Empire of the nineteenth century.

The Ottoman East and the ‘Moral Geography’ of Europe's Enlightenment

European perceptions of the Islamic Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century have often been read through the prism of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748). His ‘moral geography’ depicted a despotic and decayed Islamic Ottoman polity in contrast to the dynamism displayed in European states. Montesquieu’s comparisons and contrasts between the Ottoman East and Europe appear to support Edwa...

Military Transformation in the Ottoman Empire and Russia, 1500-1800

By the early 16th century, the Ottoman Empire had emerged as a major military power in Southeastern Europe and the Middle East. The Ottomans were feared and admired by contemporaneous Europeans from Niccol6 Machiavelli to Ivan Peresvetov. The latter regarded the empire of Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444-46, 1451-81) as a model to be emulated by his own ruler, Ivan IV of Muscovy (r. 1547-84), and inde...