Browsing by Subject "Frontier"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Open Access
Fragile alliances in the Ottoman East: the Heyderan Tribe and the empire, 1820 - 1929
(2018-04) Çiftçi, Erdal
This dissertation discusses how tribal agency impacted the eastern margins of the empire in terms of tribe-empire relations during the nineteenth century. The Heyderan, a confederative form of tribal social organization, acts as a case study, used to explore and analyze how local, provincial and imperial agencies confronted the real political situation. This study follows the transformation of the Ottoman East from a de-centralized to a centralized structure, until the emergence of the modern nation-state. During the long nineteenth century, this study argues that the tribes and the empire were separate agencies, and that the two bargained in order to expand their power at the expense of the other. As a separate imagined community, the Heyderan were not passive and dependant subjects, but rather, enacted their own political and economic agendas under a separate tribal collective identity. Relations between local and imperial agencies were dynamic and fragile, but tribe and empire often supported each other and became allies who benefited from shared missions. Therefore, politics in the Ottoman East did not develop through a top-down implementation of the imperial agenda, but rather in combination with the bottom-up responses and agency of the local Kurdish tribes. Finally, rather than completing this study in July of 1908 with the collapse of the last Ottoman Sultan, this thesis concludes by analyzing the changes in the region until 1929, when the tribe lost its political-military power, and paramount Heyderan tribal leader, Hüseyin Pasha, due to the emergence of the modern nation-state.
Open Access
“Going to the extremes”: the Balearics and Cyprus in the early medieval Byzantine insular system
(Routledge, 2019-04) Zavagno, Luca
This contribution mainly focuses on Cyprus and the Balearics, islands located at opposite geographical extremes of the Byzantine Mediterranean, during the passage from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. Historians have often regarded these islands as peripheral additions to the Byzantine heartland of the Aegean and the Anatolian plateau; this article argues that, in fact, archaeological and material indicators (such as ceramics, lead seals and coins), paired with the scarce textual sources, point to a certain degree of economic prosperity in the abovementioned islands during the period under scrutiny, suggesting that they continued to play an important role in the political, administrative and religious structures of the Byzantine Empire. A resilient insular economy and continuity of local production of artefacts was ensured by the persistence of demand from local secular and religious elites and regular, if infrequent, contacts with other areas of the Byzantine heartland or the Muslim Mediterranean.
Open Access
War and peace in the frontier : Ottoman rule in the Uyvar province, 1663-1685
(2009) Çalışır, Muhammed Fatih
Not only the provocative activities of the Transylvanian Prince György II Rákóczi but also the centuries-long Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry became the reason of an Ottoman campaign in Hungary in 1663. The war ended with the peace treaty of Vasvár signed on August 10, 1664. It was after this treaty that Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Paşa, the Ottoman Grand vizier, gave an order to establish a province around the Uyvar fortress, the most significant acquisition of the Ottomans at the end of the war. Thus, the Ottoman rule started in the Uyvar province that formed the OttomanHabsburg frontier for 22 years. Based mainly on the Ottoman chronicles, archival documents, and the secondary sources this thesis first describes and analyses the Ottoman campaign in 1663. Then, it pays close attention to the Ottoman administration in the Uyvar province. Finally, it gives us an opportunity to see the tendencies in Ottoman governmental mentality in the Habsburg frontier of the empire.