“Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire” by Jason Goodwin

 

 

368 pages, Henry Holt and Co., ISBN-13: 978-0805040814 

 

In his book Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, Jason Goodwin elegantly combines a deft historical summary of the Sublime Porte with the buoyant prose and idiosyncratic focus of a travel writer. While ostensibly in chronological order, the book is in fact organized thematically, as Goodwin leaps from one topic to another to try and delve into the psyche of this long-lasting though long-perished empire. Because of this eclectic organization, Goodwin is able to take the full measure of a realm riddled with paradox: a Turkish empire whose shock troops were Balkan Slavs and a bellicose state built through war that often governed its conquests with a light hand, a necessary approach given the plethora of faiths, cultures and nationalities that fell under Ottoman rule. For its time, it was a rather benign and even tolerant lordship, especially compared to many of the other states then in existence. 

 

Before the Ottoman Empire became the Sick Man of Europe, it was, at its height, a society that was both civilized and tolerant, again relative to other nations around it and, it must always be stressed, so long as Turks and Islam remained on top. One shining example of this trait is when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 they were warmly received by the Sultan in Constantinople, Belgrade, Salonika and Sofia (as second-class subjects, to be sure, but tolerated in a way unknown to them in their native Spain). In Goodwin’s telling, this is due to the essence of an empire that built itself on militarism and a proud nomadic past, demonstrating convincingly that these shaped Ottoman interpretations of Islam and, so, affected how it could impact their rule on Turks and other Muslims to people of different races and faiths, from Osman’s modest beylik through six centuries of an empire that spanned three continents and 7.6 million square miles. 

 

While Lords of the Horizons is steeped in orientalist apologia, it is not meant to forgive the Ottomans, but rather to capture the way they were perceived by their European counterparts and the atmosphere of much of its early historiography. It cannot be denied that, while war and superstition ruled Christian Europe, the Islamic Ottoman Empire thrived and glittered with mathematical, architectural and artistic accomplishment (at least for a time). Goodwin is great at describing how, for three hundred years before its final collapse after WWI, the empire survived even though it was perpetually on the verge of collapse, attributing the calcified empire’s sad decline not only to corruption and the rise of the West, but to the Turk’s prideful ignorance of the West, a vanity that eventually deprived the empire of the fruits of modernity. While its collapse may not have been avoidable, it could, perhaps, have been less painful. 

 

Some people in other reviews I have read were critical of Goodwin’s ambitious narrative, pitched as it is at a popular audience and organized in a generally chronological order through a scattered arrangement and meandering pace. But given the Ottoman Empire for so many centuries attempted to hold time still, these topical chapters, moving through time slowly forward while attending to aspects such as The Cage of the prison that became the seraglio, Hoards as to the immense if misplaced wealth of the empire and Shamming regarding the corruption of the state all appear to have been wisely chosen. And as good as Goodwin is at blending political, cultural and military affairs together, his work is distinguished by stylish writing and a sharp eye for just the right anecdote (the epilogue, built as it is around the fate of the empire’s famous stray dogs, is perhaps the best example of an informative and yet moving piece of writing). 

 

There have been other, more exhaustive books on the Ottoman Empire – Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire by Caroline Finkel comes to mind, reviewed on October 12th, 2012, or The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire by Lord Kinross, reviewed on April 20th, 2015 – but few have been as esoteric and, thus, insightful as Lords of the Horizons.