BEYOND GOLDEN AGE AND DECLINE:

The Legacy of Muslim Societies in Global Modernity, 1300-1900

George Mason University, March 14-15, 2011

Question 1 : In what ways has the paradigm of golden age and

decline dominated the historiography of Muslim regions in the
period from 1300-1900 CE, and how has this paradigm been
detrimental?

Jerry H. Bentley, Question 1

Human beings respond readily to stories. A narrative with a beginning, middle, and end
seems to be a natural way for humans to structure their understanding of the world
around them. There are of course many ways in which stories are instructive for
purposes of understanding the world. But we must always remember that stories are
radical simplifications of reality. The suggestion that a particular society had a difficult
(or miraculous) birth followed by a period of power (or prosperity) but later experienced
decline (and maybe even collapse) might capture some important dimensions of its
existence but totally obscure others that are equally important.

One widely held story holds that the Muslim world enjoyed a golden age at the time of
the Abbasid dynasty and entered into a long era of decline after the Turks and Mongols
established a series of transregional empires during the period about 1000 to 1300.
Some have viewed the entire era from 1300 to 1900 as an age of Muslim decline. That
must be a world record for a process of decline. How many societies have been able to
decline for six centuries straight?

There are many problems with this story. One is that it measures Muslim “decline”
against the yardstick of European “progress.” There is no question that European
peoples did remarkable things during the era 1300 to 1900. They built powerful national
states and established global maritime empires. They also constructed modern science
and carried out an amazing process of industrialization. But there is no reason why
Muslim societies should necessarily have followed the same path, even if they could have
done so. Since they did not have access to the natural resources of the New World, nor
did they enjoy the windfall of energy resources in the form of coal that fueled the
process of industrialization in Europe, it would have been very difficult indeed for Muslim
societies to duplicate European experience.

Another problem with the story is that it totally overlooks impressive achievements of
Muslim societies themselves. One salient example has to do with the remarkable
expansion of Ottoman power in the Indian Ocean basin during the sixteenth century. The
fascinating new book by Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, brings into
view a round of maritime exploration and imperial expansion that paralleled European
efforts in the New World.
Edmund Burke III, Question 1

I have taught Islamic civilization to California undergraduate History majors for 40 years.
I have used the Marshall Hodgson’s 3 volume Venture of Islam, lately supplemented with
Ira Lapidus’ History of Islamic Societies. Like Hodgson, I am also a world historian. Once
I encountered Hodgson’s opus, I realized instinctively the correctness of his approach:
any history worthy of the name must give equal wait to all periods of Islamic history,
and must also consistently seek to locate it in the larger Eurasian contexts of which it
was a part. Hodgson’s 100 page methodological introduction to Vol. 1 of The Venture
remains essential reading.

I would add that we need to be aware of the connections between the Golden Age
paradigm and the “Rise of the West” paradigm, according to which the course of Western
history can be seen as a continually upward sloping line linking the Greeks the
Renaissance and Modern Times. For Hodgson, this line is an optical elusion. The way
forward, he suggests, lies in inserting both the history of the West and of the lands of
Islam in their world historical contexts.

Giancarlo Casale, Question 1

As an historian of the early modern Ottoman Empire, the paradigm of golden age and
decline has a doubly complex and contradictory effect on the conceptualization of my
field of research. On the one hand, within the grand narrative of “Islamic civilization,”
the period 1300-1900 has traditionally held the place of “the dark ages,” the antithesis
of the golden age during which political fragmentation, intellectual stagnation, and
eventually foreign occupation were the defining elements of Muslim historical experience.
Since these centuries are virtually coterminous with the history of the Ottoman state,
this has had the effect of equating the entire trajectory of Ottoman history with decline,
and – at least until very recently—has relegated the field of Ottoman history to a
marginal position within the larger field of Islamic studies.

On the other hand, within the more restricted confines of Ottoman history we are
confronted with another version of the same problem: The sixteenth century—which is
the subject of my own research—has long held the status of an Ottoman ‘golden age,’
while subsequent centuries have been defined as a period of inexorable decline.
Recently, Ottomanists have devoted a great deal of energy to the project of
deconstructing this periodization. And yet, it remains true that the scholarly literature on
the sixteenth century is comparatively quite developed, while many subfields of Ottoman
history relating to the seventeenth, and particularly the eighteenth centuries are still in
their infancy. This imbalance makes it extremely difficult to construct a compelling
narrative of Ottoman history as a whole that can replace the story of “golden age” and
“decline” that we are so eager to transcend.

Of course, all of this also needs to be understood within an even larger framework: the
grand narrative of the “Rise of the West,” which continues to define the ways in which
we make sense of history as a discipline, as well as the manner in which we
conceptualize, organize and combine all of its constituent parts. According to this
narrative paradigm, the historical experience of Europe during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries is equated with ‘modernity,’ and the establishment of European
political, economic, and cultural hegemony over the rest of the world during at this time
is understood as the ‘end game’ of history. Within this framework, societies defined as
‘non-Western’ can only have historical relevance to the extent that they are able either
to contribute to, mimic, or resist the relentless rise of the West—and those periods in
which they are able to accomplish one of those three things are typically identified as
“golden ages” (to be followed inevitably by decline and, eventually, historical oblivion).

Question 1, Stephen Dale

This is a paradigm, which is principally associated with the historiography of the Ottoman
Empire. For a long period it seemed to be a preoccupation of Ottoman historians.
Scholars who specialize in the study of other empires, Muslim or non-Muslim have
always, been interested in such questions, but not to the extent that it concerns or has
concerned Ottoman specialists. Safavid historians study an empire that was never as
powerful as the Ottomans or as wealthy as the Mughals. In the Iranian case scholars
have been more preoccupied with the survival of a fragile, impoverished state and
perhaps even more so with the themes of Iranian identity and the rise of Shi‘i Islam,
which becomes associated with Iranian identity. Mughal or Timurid-Mughal historians
have also been preoccupied with other issues such as Hindu-Muslim relations and the
colonial occupation of the subcontinent in the waning days of the Empire.

If one wishes to discuss this paradigm, it is important to emphasize that both golden age
and decline can both be discussed from different perspectives: the attitude of rulers, the
perception of an empire’s intellectuals, scholars or bureaucrats or religious scholars or
the later interpretation of twenty-first century historians. If one wants to return to the
traditional question of golden ages and decline then at least it is important to be precise
about the criteria of the debate and the identity and perspective of those who discuss it.
The idea of Golden Ages has different meaning for different individuals or classes.

One of the striking omissions in the discussion of imperial rise and decline has been the
failure to engage the single indigenous Middle Eastern/Islamic model of the rise and fall
of states, albeit tribal ones. This is Ibn Khaldun’s famous dialectical theory, which he
advances in the Muqaddimah, which, while, like most models, it does not exactly fit the
case of any of the so-called early modern Muslim empires, it still raises fundamental
questions about the political, social and psychological changes that occurs in any state
over the course of its existence. Some Ottoman historians worried about the implications
of Ibn Khaldun’s cyclical model for the Ottoman Empire, but most modern historians
have ignored Ibn Khaldun’s social, political and psychological insights about the cycles of
dynasties. If we are to focus on the question of the rise and fall of empires, why not
begin with Ibn Khaldun’s model.

Nelly Hanna, Question 1

It has created its method of periodization with 1800 as a cutting line, a before and an
after, contact with the west. The centuries prior to 1800 were associated with decline
while the period starting with 1800 was associated with an awakening due to contact
with the west. The ‘before’ has sometimes been studied in ahistorical ways. This
approach was also usually lacking in the economic aspects of history, and with a heavy
concentration on cultural and religious aspects. It has also meant that all the sources for
modernity were from the west. As a result for a long time earlier centuries were under
studied.
Patrick Manning, Question 1

The paradigm separates the period 1300-1900 from the times before and after it; it
defines the Islamic world in terms of Middle Eastern empires rather than its larger and
expanding frontiers; it contrasts a declining Islamic world to a rising European world; it
focuses history on imperial conflict and assumes an underlying religious hostility as the
motive force for this history.

Andrew J. Newman, Question 1

The ‘decline paradigm’ has long been associated with discussions of both the Ottoman
system but also with the larger Muslim project in the aftermath of 1258. From at least
the work of the well-known Persianist E G Browne (d. 1926) in the early part of the last
century ‘decline’ also has dominated discussions of the Safavid period in Iran, a period
conventionally given the dates 1501 to 1722. In the Safavid case, ‘decline’ has been
most often deployed with respect to the trajectory of the 17th century. Most Western-
language commentators on 17th century Safavid Iran have viewed the period as having
begun with a burst of cultural and intellectual achievement, in an atmosphere of military,
political, and economic stability, due largely to the policies undertaken by Shah `Abbas I
(r. 1588-1629), only to end in the darkness of fanatical religious orthodoxy amid
military, political, and economic chaos. Most commentators cite the changing behavior
and interests of important Twelver Shi`i `ulama over the 17th century as a key factor in
Safavid ‘decline’: where the `ulama of the early 17th century have been characterized as
interested primarily in philosophy and mysticism, and, as averse to, or having refrained
from, entanglements in secular affairs. Western-language scholars have portrayed the
majority of the late 17th century Iranian `ulama as intolerant, orthodox clerics who
crushed the philosophical renaissance of the earlier half of the century and whose
growing political influence inhibited an adequate response by the Safavid court to the
political and military crises enveloping it, with the result that, in 1722, the Afghans
sacked the Safavid capital of Esfahan.

A key body of material cited in support of aspects of ‘Safavid decline’ comprises, first,
Persian-language sources, especially including chronicles, many completed many years
after the 1722 fall of Esfahan to the Afghans, the event conventionally heralded as
marking the dynasty’s end, and, secondly, the accounts of foreign travelers to and
residents in Safavid Iran. The ‘agenda’ of the authors of these sources is all too seldom
subjected to critical analysis.

As a result of recent activity scholars and lay persons interested in Safavid Iran today
have at their disposal a much vaster array of primary and secondary sources, composed
in a myriad of languages than was available prior to Iran’s 1979 Revolution. A myriad of
sub-fields now may also now be said to exist within ‘Safavid Studies’. But, scholars in
these ‘new’ sub-disciplines continue to take this model of the decline and fall of the
Safavid ‘state’ as given and to privilege identification of signs of ‘decay’ in the ‘life’ of
their sub-discipline over signs of ‘vitality’.

Baki Tezcan, Question 1

As Bentley observes in his response, a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end is
very attractive to present complicated developments to a large audience. Obviously, this
paradigm’s domination of the historiography of the Islamic World in this period is also
related to Orientalism as Said showed to everyone more than thirty years ago. It is not
too difficult to see that making decline the focus of analysis has led for many significant
developments in the Islamic World of this period to be overlooked.

However, among the professionals of Islamic history, the decline paradigm has been
challenged for quite a while now – if we take Roger Owen’s piece in Review of Middle
East Studies as a starting point, since 1975. Yet an alternative narrative that is as
attractive to non-specialists as the decline has been does not seem to have emerged –
otherwise this forum would not be necessary. So perhaps focusing on the critique of the
decline paradigm is not necessarily the best thing to do to appeal to our colleagues
outside our field, or to the public at large. We need to come up with an alternative
narrative.

Another important question to consider is what people in the Islamic World think about
this paradigm of golden age and decline. What had struck me within the first few years
of my graduate school experience in the US was the disjunction between the strong
critique of Ottoman decline among the Middle East specialists of the US academe (Cemal
Kafadar’s article on the subject was an inspiring exception to me) and the continuing
relevance of the concept in Turkey. Obviously, there is a whole set of reasons for this
disjunction such as the internalization of Orientalism by the modernizing elite of Turkey.
Yet, it is also difficult to argue that the Ottoman Empire did not decline in its global
significance or that it did not become relatively poorer: just take a twenty minute walk in
Istanbul from the Topkapi Palace, where William Harborne, the ambassador of Queen
Elizabeth, sought the alliance of the Ottomans against the Spanish in the 1580s, to the
Istanbul High School the building of which used to be occupied by the Ottoman Public
Debt Administration that was run by Europeans who collected taxes in the Ottoman
Empire in order to transfer funds to the empire’s creditors in the 1880s. So perhaps
centering our scholarship on the critique of the decline paradigm does not resonate well
in the Islamic World where people live in the midst of physical markers of a relative
decline.

John Voll, Question 1

The “Long Decline Paradigm” (“LDP” for purposes of this discussion) is one that has
shaped not only the study of Muslim societies but also the study of all non-European
societies in this era. The LDP is part of the Europe-centered vision of world history that
interprets world history primarily as it relates to Western European history. Since the
basic narrative of Europe-centered world historiography is the rise to global dominance
of Western Europe in the 19th century, the narrative for other major global societies gets
dominated by asking the question: “What went wrong?”—which basically is asking the
question of why did not Chinese, South Asian, and Muslim societies have the same
history as Western Europe? “Success” in the LDP is defined by viewing a non-European
society in terms of how close its experiences were to that of Western Europe: did it have
a “Renaissance,” did it have a religious “Reformation” that went beyond medieval
theological-institutional formulations, did it have an “Enlightenment,” or an “Industrial
Revolution”?

In recent years, the concept of “multiple modernities” has been developed by scholars
like S. N. Eisenstadt. This conceptualization recognizes the broad range of ways that
socio-cultural identities can be both distinctive and “modern.” Societies in the era from
1300-1900 reflect a similar duality of sharing a common experience of major changes as
a result of increasingly intense networks of hemispheric and global interactions and, at
the same time, developing distinctive responses to those new conditions. The major city-
based societies of the era were strong and dynamic, not declining and failing. For
example, China under the Qing dynasty in the 17th/18th centuries reached its largest
territorial expansion in Chinese history.

In the Muslim world, the era from 1300-1500 was a time of major expansion of the
number of believers and of important Muslim political systems. The result was that by
the 16th century, the world of Islam was virtually twice the size that it had been in the
era of the “Golden Age” of the Caliphs (7th-10th centuries CE). Political power was
expressed in dynamically expansive states ranging from the Songhay state in West
Africa through the great imperial sultanates of the Ottomans, Mughals, and Safavids and
the entrepreneurial amirs and sultans of South East Asia.

The LDP ignores these developments and gives a misleading sense of centrality to
Western European experience. This means that not only is the history of Muslim societies
distorted but also the history of Western Europe is clearly misunderstood. It means, to
note a very specific example, that the history of the Industrial Revolution ignores very
important elements: if, as many scholars think, the development of the cotton industry
in Lancashire is important in the Industrial Revolution, it is a distortion of understanding
that development to ignore the role of imported cotton cloth from India (which
dominated the global market in cotton cloth at the beginning of the 18th century) as an
incentive to create local British cotton cloth production.

The LDP, in other words, provides an extremely misleading narrative for understanding
world history in 1300-1900, for understanding the history of Muslim regions in that era,
and even for understanding the history of Western Europe.

Hayrettin Yucesoy, Question 1

One of the most important effects of the decline paradigm has been its power in shaping
our approach to the history of “Muslim regions.” It is essentialist, binary, and normative.
It urges us to divide history into qualitatively and morally preferential periods, sort out
what it deems substantial from the ephemeral, the authentic from the borrowed, the
genuine from the fake, and the correct from the wrong. It reduces all aspects of history
to “religion” as the core of “Muslim regions” and favors Arabic, the Middle East, and
Umayyad-Abbasid caliphates as the essence of “Islamic history,” beyond and after which
one can only observe decline and syncretism until European modernity comes to rescue
this long in sleep civilization from the ruins of the middle ages. At the end, even when it
praises the “golden age” the decline paradigm undermines “Islam” and “Muslim” as
exotic, incomplete, and irreparably flawed. While “Islam” is depicted as the other, the
alter ego which the “West” is not and should not be, the “West” emerges as the model
against which we judge the others.

Question 2 : How does your work contribute to challenging this

paradigm?
Jerry H. Bentley, Question 2

One of the main goals of the new world history that has emerged since the 1960s and
especially since the 1980s is to avoid Eurocentric and other kinds of ethnocentric
analyses. World historians do not deny the significance of Europe, but they reject the
assumption that European standards are universally valid. They find it more instructive
to focus analysis on processes of cross-cultural interaction and exchange that linked the
fortunes of all societies that took part in networks of interaction and exchange. They
recognize that different societies have collectively made different decisions about the
investments they make with the human, natural, financial, and other resources available
to them.

Edmund Burke III, Question 2

As a world historian who is also a historian of the modern Middle East, I confront the
Golden Age paradigm (and its reciprocal, the Rise of the West paradigm) continually.
Only by continually applying a world historical perspective (that is by inserting the
history of both the lands of Islam and the so-called West in all of human history) can we
correct for the in-built biases these paradigms convey.

Giancarlo Casale, Question 2

A central goal of my work is to try to get away from the idea that history is a zero sum
game, or in other words, the idea that the Rise of the West necessarily implies the
decline of everyone else.

To this end, the particular focus of my research is the history of Ottoman expansion in
the Indian Ocean during the sixteenth century—a period of history that corresponds with
the European ‘Age of Exploration.’ In most of the existing literature on this subject, the
Ottomans are depicted as being somehow part of a pre-existing “Islamic civilization” of
maritime Asia, and therefore as victims of the Portuguese, who used superior Western
forms of technology, ideology, and economic organization to displace the Ottomans and
establish the first European seaborne empire. Instead, what I tried to show is that the
Ottomans did not become involved in the Indian Ocean until after the Portuguese were
already there, and that in fact the Portuguese presence in maritime Asia was a necessary
precondition for this involvement.

The process, as I see it, worked something like this: Before the sixteenth century, the
Indian Ocean region was unified commercially but fragmented politically, crisscrossed by
long-distance trade routes dominated by Muslim merchants but without any single
political power—Muslim or otherwise—that claimed political authority over the sea per
se. This, however, changed radically with the arrival of the Portuguese, who injected a
new kind of politics into the Indian Ocean by making unprecedented claims to being
“lords of the navigation and commerce” of all of maritime Asia. And crucially, the way
that the Portuguese enforced these claims was by using their heavily armed ships to
prevent Muslim merchants from traveling freely between the Indian Ocean and the Red
Sea, meaning that for the first time in history a non-Muslim maritime power was actively
devoted to blocking Muslim access to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Shortly thereafter, the Ottomans conquered Egypt and gained their own foothold in the
Indian Ocean region for the first time. In the process, they also became associated with
the twin titles of “Caliph” and “Protector of the Holy Cities”— two titles that had
previously been almost empty of political connotations, but which many Indian Ocean
Muslims now increasingly saw as bearing a sovereign responsibility to keep the trade and
pilgrimage routes between the Red Sea with the rest of maritime Asia open and safe./ In
this way, the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean presented the Ottomans with
both a daunting challenge and an unprecedented opportunity: On the one hand, as
“Caliph” and “Protector of the Holy Cities” the Ottoman sultan was now responsible for
the safety of Muslim merchants and pilgrims throughout the Indian Ocean, meaning that
his legitimacy could be undermined by Portuguese depredations even if they took place
in areas thousands of miles beyond the physical borders of his empire. On the other
hand, if the sultan could in fact provide these merchants and pilgrims with some
measure of protection, then in return he could expect to be recognized by them as a
transcendent “universal sovereign,” deserving of some measure of loyalty and obedience
from Muslims throughout maritime Asia, regardless of whether or not they actually lived
within the borders of the Ottoman empire.

The bulk of my recently and mercifully completed book, The Ottoman Age of Exploration,
is dedicated to documenting the various ways in which the Ottomans took up this
challenge. As I tried to show, over the course of the sixteenth century the Ottomans
developed an increasingly sophisticated combination of strategies to confront the
Portuguese and protect the interests of Indian Ocean Muslims. By the second half of the
century, these strategies had proven so successful that the Portuguese had lifted their
anti-Muslim blockade, the volume of trade through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf
outstripped the rival Portuguese trade around the Cape of Good Hope, and the Ottoman
sultan’s name was read in the khutba of congregational mosques in communities as
remote from one another and from the Ottoman capital as Calicut, Sumatra, and the
Maldives./ The essential point to all of this, however, is not simply that the Ottomans
were ‘successful,’ but rather that their success was predicated on a productively
adversarial relationship with the Portuguese. Had the Portuguese not introduced a new
kind of politics in the Indian Ocean, and provided a foil against which the Ottomans could
develop their own ideological, diplomatic and political response, it would have been
inconceivable for the Ottomans to become so deeply and extensively involved in
maritime Asia—and in so many innovative and unprecedented ways—as in fact they did.
And indeed, once the Portuguese threat to Muslim shipping was removed—in large
measure because of the Ottomans’ own actions—the Ottomans themselves were unable
to maintain their imperial presence in the Indian Ocean.

All of this suggests at least one way to begin re-conceptualizing the history of global
modernity: rather than seeing it as something to which the non-Western world is simply
subjected to (and expected either to resist or to succumb), modernity can instead be
understood as an interactive process, as the product of a series of dialectical
relationships between different and competing state systems, ideologies, technologies,
cultural formations, economies and geographies that are inexorably drawn into ever
closer and more productive dialogue with one another. From this perspective, rather
than presenting the Portuguese as harbingers of modernity and the Ottomans as its
victims (or vice versa), we can instead find the most important engine of modernity in
the locus of interaction between the two.
Question 2, Stephen Dale

2. My own work does not focus on this issue, although I discuss it in my recent
book on Muslim Empires. First, since all three empires, Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal,
had rulers who brought their states to new heights of territorial control, wealth and
cultural florescence it is a natural subject to discuss. These rulers were, respectively:
Suleyman the Magnificent, Shah ‘Abbas I and Shah Jahan. Whatever later historians
think of these rulers, they and or their historians often had high opinions of their rule. As
indicated above, the critical issue is the identity and perspective of the person who
conceives of golden ages. Decline is a different matter, but since all three empires
disappeared, it is natural to ask why and to look for both internal and external measures
of decline, such as decline of personal dynamism, loss of territory, economic malaise,
cultural decay and relative loss of power relative to internal groups or other states.

Nelly Hanna, Question 2

My work has challenged this paradigm in the following ways. Generally speaking, I have
tried to look for 17th and 18th century sources for developments in the 19th century.
Thus not all modern developments were attributable to European influence. On the
contrary I find that many important developments had their sources before European
penetration.

In my forthcoming publication Artisan Entrepreneurs (Syracuse UP), for instance, I show

how in the 17th and especially in the 18th centuries, some guilds (especially those
producing export goods) were influenced by international trade conditions and adapted
their structures in important ways to meet new challenges. My book, In Praise of Books
(Syracuse UP, 2003), focuses on a group of persons, educated but functioning outside
the religious establishment, and setting up new norms for writing, some of which were
picked up in the 19th century. Finally, my Making Big Money in 1600 (Syracuse UP,
1998) which follows the life of a prominent merchant shows there was a dynamic
economy, it had its structures, and it worked.

Patrick Manning, Question 2

My work on the African diaspora gives substantial attention to large portions of the
Islamic world: portions of sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghrib, the Middle East, South Asia,
the Indian Ocean, and Europe. The work raises questions about the movement of
numerous people of sub-Saharan African ancestry, in slavery in freedom, throughout the
Islamic world. It posits the possibility of substantial cultural continuity and innovation
spread by this African diaspora. It raises questions about how and when racialized
visions of black people developed (for instance, I suspect that there were links in the rise
of racial ideology among Europeans and Middle Easterners, as reflected for instance in
the expanding slave army of Mulay Isma’il in Morocco). It speaks to the possible specific
roles of African-descended people in the colonial and post-colonial struggles of North
Africa and the Middle East.

Secondly, my work on migration suggests that there is much to be learned through

systematic study of migrations of various sorts in the Muslim Empires and adjoining
areas. I have worked on migration and on regional population estimates for all of Africa
back to 1600, and find both that the magnitude of migration has been significant and
that the levels of population were quite a bit higher than is now usually thought. I favor
more systematic estimates of population in the period 1300-1900 for all areas of the
world and—in this context—specifically for the Middle East, Central Asia, South and
Southeast Asia.

Andrew J. Newman, Question 2

Much of my early research on Safavid Iran comprised work on the religious discourse,
especially in the 17th century. I have examined debates between key scholars of the
period on a variety of issues, including the interpretation of theological and
jurisprudential doctrine and practice, clerical service to the established political
institution and clerics’ accumulation of authority in the community in the absence of the
Hidden Imam. I have also sought to challenge the prevailing understanding of the
careers and contributions of late-17th Shi`i scholars by examining material produced by
certain of those clerics – to date mainly in the field of medical discourse - to demonstrate
their openness and tolerance to non-Shi`i and even non-Muslim traditions.

More broadly, my 2006/2008 Safavid Iran notes that the Safavid period, even if the
1501-1722 dates are accepted, stands as the longest-lasting of Iran’s Islamic period
dynasties. Instead of proceeding from the assumption of decline, the volume asks why it
was that the dynasty in fact lasted as long as did. The volume also suggests that the
dynasty’s ‘end’ is not usefully understood solely with reference to a single military ‘event’
and that, in fact, aspects of the Safavid ‘legacy’ – in politics and religious discourse
especially, for example - lived on throughout the 18th century.

My own work, also, sought to query the ‘agenda’ of the domestic and foreign authors of
key primary sources on which the field has long depended for its continued recourse to
and reliance on ‘decline’. I also am interested in ‘recovering voices’ of hard-to-identify
non-elites in Safavid society. There is already some useful material on both: see
Brentjes, 2009, and Quinn, 2000.

Baki Tezcan, Question 2

Rather than engaging with the decline paradigm with a view to refute it as a whole, I try
to marginalize it by suggesting a different angle to approach the period in question. In
my very recently published book, The Second Ottoman Empire, I did this by focusing on
political development and suggesting that the arguably most significant development of
the period that runs from the late sixteenth century to the early nineteenth is socio-
economic and political mobility. It is in this period that one witnesses the gradual
development of a monetary economy and the growth of a bourgeoning class of
merchants and financiers as well as the political empowerment of this economically
privileged class. I also argued that this period witnessed the development of an
indigenous model of limited monarchy.
John Voll, Question 2

Some of my scholarship aims at redefining the basic units of analysis. Many of the
existing narratives of Muslim and world history in the period are built on analyses that
frame narratives as histories of “civilizations.” The “civilizational narrative” presents a
misleadingly segmented vision of the Muslim world. In many discussions, the global
group of Muslim societies are called “Islamic civilization,” a label that ignores the fact
that the Muslim world is multi-civilizational. Significant Muslim communities are
historically parts of Middle Eastern, Indian, Chinese, African, and now even Western
civilizations. My efforts to provide a critique of the civilization-based narrative and to
redefine the units of analysis are illustrated by the following essays:

“Islam as a Community of Discourse and a World-System,” in The Sage Handbook of

Islamic Studies, ed. Akbar Ahmed and Tamara Sonn (London: Sage, 2010)

“’Southernization’ as a Construct in Post-Civilizational Narrative,” in The New World

History: A Teacher’s Companion, ed. By Ross E. Dunn (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
2000).

“The End of Civilization is Not So Bad,” [MESA Presidential Address] Middle East Studies
Association Bulletin 28, No. 1 (July 1994).

Hayrettin Yucesoy, Question 2

As a historian of early Islam, I try to avoid the notions of golden age and decline and
focus on human interactions as changing but shared experiences across cultural,
political, and religious divides. I look for similarities rather than differences, shared
experiences as well as peculiarities of human acts to erase some of the damages the
decline narrative has imprinted in our consciousness. In my work on messianic beliefs
imperial politics, I attempt to show how early ninth-century societies and individuals in
the Abbasid world reacted to messianic beliefs across religious, cultural, and economic
divides. While the modern master narrative sees the early Abbasid era as a golden age,
contemporaries had a totally different perceptions of their own time, which cannot be
forced into either “decline” or “golden age” paradigms. In a sense, my research shows
how societies defy such “lump sum” generalizations about their constituent parts, which
are by their very nature always interacting, shifting, and changing. So it is appropriate to
question in this context, the observer rather than the observed as the question of decline
is squarely about the former.

Question 3 : How can this period be re-conceptualized in order to

more accurately portray important features of the history of global
modernity?

Jerry H. Bentley, Question 3

“Global modernity” is an interesting term. What might it mean? For that matter, what
does “modernity” mean? And what does modernity pertain to – a nation, a cultural
region, the entire world?

Many historians have spoken of modernity as though it refers to a historical destination –

a state of affairs characterized by certain traits, such as science, industry, urbanization,
and the nation-state form of political organization. By this standard, the label modernity
is only applicable to those lands that acquire the traits associated with modernity.

In recent decades, others have spoken of “alternative modernities” or “multiple

modernities.” Their guiding thought is that modernity might have one form in Europe or
North America but quite different forms in other societies. Social, economic, and political
organization might take different forms in China or India than in Great Britain or the USA
and yet still be modern.
While recognizing the appeal of both these approaches – modernity as historical
destination and the notion that alternative modernities are conceivable – I personally
find it useful to think of modernity as a historical process. In a world of states and
societies constantly engaged in cross-cultural interaction and exchange, large-scale
historical developments will almost certainly play out differently in different parts of the
world.

If there is industrial development in one region, for example, there will likely be
repercussions and very different economic developments in other regions. The earliest
European industrialists had no domestic source of cotton fiber or natural rubber, both of
which were essential elements of the early industrial order. So they had to obtain cotton
from India, Egypt, and the American South, while they turned to the Amazon River
basin, central Africa, and Malaya for rubber. India, Egypt, the American South, the
Amazon River basin, central Africa, and Malaya did not industrialize their economies, at
least not for a century or more, but all were essential regions for the development of
industrial modernity. They participated just as much as Europe in the development of
industrial modernity, but their experiences in doing so were radically different from
European experiences.

There are very good reasons to focus historical analysis on developments internal to any
given society. At the same time, it is essential to focus historical analysis on relations
between different societies in order to understand how large-scale historical processes
work their effects differentially in different lands. Personally, I would say that “global
modernity” is a useful term and that it draws attention to networks of cross-cultural
interaction, influence, and exchange that work their effects in very different ways from
one land to another.

Edmund Burke III, Question 3

I am a bit leery of the concept of global modernity, even if (or because) it is currently
fashionable. The concept itself is insufficiently grounded in the history of all of humanity,
with the result that it tends to be modernocentric. Thus it holds to a version of the
“European miracle” approach, even if it is for some scholars, a dystopic one. Although I
would agree that all humans are “modern” I would see this as deriving primarily from
the fact that humanity as a whole is no longer governed by the Malthusian scissors of
the solar energy regime. Currently humans live under the fossil fuel energetic regime. As
a result the pre-existing solar energy regime limits on growth are no longer in place.
This, more than the Enlightenment, modern science or other cultural determinants have
enabled our species to flourish (some groups and individuals more than others,
depending upon geographical and class locations).

Giancarlo Casale, Question 3

I am of course biased by the chronologies and geographies of my own research, but I

believe that one of the keys to taking the history of global modernity in a new and more
meaningful direction lies in tackling much more systematically the question of the “early
modern” in the narrative of world history. Here I should begin by saying that I am in
general sympathetic to the aims of post-colonial studies, and in particular to the project
of “Provincializing Europe”—a project dedicated to the idea that ‘modernity’ as such is an
all-encompassing and variegated phenomenon that transcends the historical experience
of the West. One problem I have with this approach, however, is that in their enthusiasm
to demonstrate the modernity of the non-Western world, post-colonial historians have
become extremely limited in their chronological perspective, rarely if ever venturing back
earlier in time than the nineteenth century—when the Enlightenment, the industrial
revolution, international capitalism, and European imperialism are considered to have
created the conditions necessary for a truly universal modernity.

I believe this fixation on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is a serious limitation,
because it leaves unexplored the question of if, how, and to what extent the world was
already on a path towards a shared experience of modernity during the centuries before
the final establishment of global Western hegemony. I am firmly convinced that it is
through the study of this earlier period (roughly 1350-1750) that we have the best
chance of radically reconceptualizing the narrative of world history. But to do so requires
that scholars who study the Ottoman Empire, or the Mughal Empire, or for that matter
the Spanish Empire or the Kingdom of Monomotapa, must all start to think of themselves
as “early modernists” rather than simply “Ottomanists,” “Iberianists,” and so on—and to
really think hard about what this means in comparative, world-historical terms.

Question 3, Stephen Dale

I do not know what “global modernity” means, although I believe it is a Eurocentric

concept. I do not think it is a good idea to try to re-conceptualize the history of these
empires by focusing on what I assume to be developments which first occurred in
Europe, such as industrial capitalism, rise of experimental science, secular education and
even nationalism.

Nelly Hanna, Question 3

One way to do this might be to consider some of the global trends of the period 1300-
1800 and to find where the Islamic world falls in. This would encourage a comparative
approach. Peter Gran’s recent book, The Rise of the Rich offers one alternative to the
rise of the West.
Patrick Manning, Question 3

Most basically, by dethroning the dichotomy of rise and decline of putatively self-
contained societies from its primacy in the interpretation of history. Instead, a focus on
interactions within and among social groups and regions envisioned at various scales can
provide a richer view of the past. Attention to the hajj and its importance as an
institution and as a symbol of commonality may suggest that it has been a forerunner of
modern-day interconnection.

Andrew J. Newman, Question 3

I think the period is ripe for a re-think but ‘global modernity’ may not be the only, or
even the best, ‘end-point’ of that process. Do we want to postulate that ‘end-point’ in
advance of this re-think and thereby risk predetermining the processes of our research
so as to guarantee the answer.

That said, however, there are certain questions that might be kept in mind as one
proceeds and these might include ‘internationalisation’. There were ‘global’ networks in
place over this period, and before. These were not only trade and commercial networks
but also ‘networks of the mind’, encompassing cross-border discourse in art and
architectural, literature and even spiritual matters/religion, for example.

Are we all agreed on what constitutes ‘global modernity’? ‘Globalisation’ is not a late
20th/early 21st century phenomenon although the forms and balance of relationships
that characterize its present-day configuration are certainly historically specific. Of all the
centuries encompassed by the 1300 to 1900 period, are not the ‘signs’ of global
modernity as we might conceive of them as relating especially to such ‘modern’
phenomena as colonialism and imperialism, in their physical and non-physical
manifestations, therefore only visible from the mid- to-late 19th century?

Baki Tezcan, Question 3

I believe if we take global modernity as the almost exponential increase in mobility and
focus on both physical mobility as in Cemal Kafadar’s Ottoman merchant, who died in
Venice, or Giancarlo Casale’s Ottomans, who reached Sumatra, and also social mobility
as in some of the economically powerful Ottoman subjects who entered the ruling group
of their society in this period, we would see that the Ottomans were as modern as
anyone else – actually Sir Henry Blount asserted back in 1634 that the Ottomans were
the “only modern people” of his time.

So a focus on increasing socio-economic mobility as a key feature of this period might

also help us in re-writing the history of global modernity.

John Voll, Question 3

One of the major features of the era from 1300 to 1900 in world history is the
increasingly intense nature of networks of interaction that transcend local, regional, and
societal boundaries. The different levels are not exclusive polarities – dynamics are not
either/ or but rather are inclusive. Seeing “global” and “local” as being opposites, for
example, obscures the increasing importance of “global” elements in shaping distinctive
“local” cultures/ societies, and also the contributions of “local” elements to the definitions
of seemingly “global” phenomena. A useful example of the productivity of seeing “global”
and “local” as interacting and not necessarily competing dimensions of any given
society’s history is Donald R. Wright, The World and a Very Small Place in Africa
(London: Sharpe, 1997). Wright uses the global system conceptualizations of Richard
Eaton (Islamic History as Global History) and Voll in his very “local” history of Niumi in
the Gambia River valley. (See pages 18-19, and note 7, page 33.)

In this reconceptualization, a useful concept is “cosmopolitanism” as discussed, for

example, in the special issue of the Journal of World History 21, No. 3 (September 2010)
on “Cosmopolitanism in World History.”

Hayrettin Yucesoy, Question 3

A quick glance at textbook-world-histories will show what is wrong with the current
historiography of world history. Even in the narratives dealing with earlier eras, the
textbook-world-history is constructed in such a way that the reader is made to anticipate
the “rise of the west.” Therefore, a serious thought should be given to the ways in which
we assess the agency of non-western societies in world-history beyond making gestures
towards their importance but not really engaging the effort of decentralizing world-
historical narrative. The aim should not be provincializing Europe to create yet another
center, but really decentralizing all and dismantling long standing continental, linguistic,
cultural, and religious frameworks, which we used to work with to understand the past.

Question 4 : What new frameworks can be applied to the study of

this period in your area of specialization?

Jerry H. Bentley, Question 4

One of the most interesting approaches taken by world historians in recent years is a
fresh comparative analysis of economic development in early modern times (about 1500
to 1800). In his landmark study entitled The Great Divergence, Kenneth Pomeranz
argued persuasively that European and Chinese economies were remarkably similar
throughout this period and that the great divergence of economic fortunes came
afterwards, when European peoples were able to benefit from a windfall of New World
resources as well as a new and powerful source of energy in the form of coal. It would
be most helpful to have parallel studies exploring the economic organization of the other
large, powerful societies of the eastern hemisphere, and particularly the Islamic
“gunpowder empires” –- the Ottoman, Savafid, and Mughal empires –- during the early
modern era.

Edmund Burke III, Question 5

A central theme in my approach has been consistently to locate the Middle East and the
so-called West in their larger changing world historical contexts: ecological, political,
economic and cultural. Since this is but a brief note, I would refer readers to the World
History for Us All website, which I helped to create, for more on the vision of world
history I have articulated here.

http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/default.php

Giancarlo Casale, Question 4

Following up on some of the themes already introduced above, I think that a focus on
the study of empires in comparative context could be a very productive framework for
exploring the subject of early modernity. In the same way that the nation-state is the
definitive political, social, and economic institution of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, a good case can be made that empires are the definitive institutions of the
early modern period—and differentiate this period not only from what came after, but
from what had come before. The fact is that if you imagine a political map of the world
in, say, the year 1200, you would be looking at a fragmented map without any political
formations truly worthy of the name “empire” (China being the only partial exception).
But by 1600, the entire midsection of the world was encompassed by a belt of 5 or 6
large imperial states, something that really had no historical precedent in any previous
period.

I think this “imperial age” needs to be studied as a phenomenon, and much better
integrated into our general understanding of early modern history. In the same way that
any narrative of the emergence of a particular nation-state in the modern period needs
to take account of the larger global trends associated with modernity, which seem to
make some version of the nation-state almost inevitable, we also need to see the
empires of the early modern world as products of their times, as formations that respond
to a set of economic, social, ideological, and technological realities that transcend
particular geographies, cultures, and political traditions—and as entities that evolve in a
constant dialogue with one another.

Question 4, Stephen Dale

4. I think the history of these empires should be approached by focusing on first, the
political and cultural traditions of the founders, their goal in founding their states, the
beneficiaries of the conquest, the economic bases of the regime, the religious and
intellectual ethos of the population etc. Above all it should be recognized that empires
are not charitable or social welfare institutions. They existed, as did European empires,
to perpetuate dynasties and profit dominant groups in the population. In any event, if
historians in writing about these states are constantly measuring every development by
European criteria, they are wasting their time. Let us first understand the goals of
members of these dynasties, their principal supporters and the mentalite, as far as it can
be determined, of the broader population.

Nelly Hanna, Question 4

One way to do this might be to consider some of the global trends of the period 1300-
1800 and to find where the Islamic world falls in. This would encourage a comparative
approach. Peter Gran’s recent book, The Rise of the Rich offers one alternative to the
rise of the West.

Patrick Manning, Question 4

- The framework of broader social and cultural interaction with time.

- The framework of the African diaspora.

- The framework of empire and colonialism might be applied more systematically.

- The framework of the world economy and its links in commerce, production, and social
class.

- The framework of population size and migration.

- The framework of ecological change, including the history of health.

Andrew J. Newman, Question 4

The invitation to participate in this forum referred to this as a ‘scholarly forum on

Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Empires’ and, indeed, the term ‘empire’ can be said to be
making something of a ‘comeback’ in our field with reference to the Ottomans, Safavids
and Mughals, as witness a series of recent publications (Dale, 2010; Matthee, 2010;
Streusand, 2011) and scholarly research projects in Europe and the US (‘Empire in the
Middle East’, Peter Sluglett (CUP); ‘The Edinburgh History of the Islamic Empires’, Ian
Netton (EUP); ‘Eurasian empires’, Jeroen Duindam (Leiden)). But, a term that has been
applied to the Romans, the Ottomans, the British and the Americans – to name a few –
might not offer a framework of analysis with as much value as may be thought. The
terms ‘state’ and ‘early modern/modern’ as applied to date also seem subjective in
nature and therefore also problematic.

Interestingly, even Hodgson, I, 1974 – perhaps the ‘godfather’ of the use of ‘empire’ in
recent times and with reference to these three polities – applied the term in a rather
conservative fashion: was his acceptance of such elements of the post-1258 decline
paradigm as the rise of ‘the shari`a’ an acknowledgement of concomitant/associated
notions involving the ‘closing of the “bab” of ijtihad”?

An ‘objective’ set of questions posed with reference to each polity would facilitate a
comparative discourse with regard to these three. These might include, for example,
questions as to the changing economic and socio-political bases of each, but also a focus
on evolving forms of cultural expression (art, architecture, literature) and varying
spiritual discourse, and necessarily include some discussion of what ‘went before’ in
these realms and how these may be seen to have developed over time.

This model would allow for fruitful comparative discussions of other polities, in Europe,
Africa, South America, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, for example.

In the process, also, as much attention might be given to approaches offered by the
‘history from below’ or, more recently, the ‘subaltern studies’ paradigms. The latter,
especially as it has made its presence felt in Middle Eastern Studies, mainly privileges
the period from the mid-19th century on. The former, as on offer in the works of
Christopher Hill on 17th c England, for example, encourages attention to religious
discourse as a means of locating and identifying the concerns of non-elites in earlier
periods.

Baki Tezcan, Question 4

As it happens, I had very much these questions in mind when I was transforming my
dissertation into a book. So my book, The Second Ottoman Empire, is an attempt to
provide such a new framework to the study of this period in Ottoman history, my area of
specialization. I neither want to repeat what I wrote in response to the second question
above nor to talk more about my own book, which is becoming embarrassingly self-
promotional (interested parties could skim the introduction and the conclusion of the
book which I submitted to the forum administration in a pdf).

John Voll, Question 4

One possible new framework that could avoid some of the difficulties of the LDP for
understanding the histories of Muslim societies in 1300-1900 is to redefine what is
meant by “modern” and “early modern.” If “modernity” is defined as urban-centered
industrial society with experimental, empirically-oriented scientific thought as an
important component, then “modernity” is not clearly visible anyplace in the world until
the nineteenth century. In this definition, the labeling of the period from 1500-1800 as
the “early modern period” creates a teleological story that turns the world history of that
era into a deterministic advent narrative, of “waiting for modernity.”

If one uses concepts of increasing inter-regional and trans-regional interactions, the

analysis can emphasize the main narrative of the period as being intensified trans-
regional networking leading to globalization – instead of Renaissance-Reformation-
Enlightenment leading to “modernity.” One such reconceptualized periodization is
suggested by many of the materials prepared by the National Center for History in the
Schools in the University of California, Los Angeles. The Center provides a periodization
for the “Big Eras.” “Big Era Six” is the “Great Global Convergence, 1400-1800.”

One possible new framework would be to frame the era as the “Global Convergence
Period” and avoid using the terminology of “early modern” for this era. Such a new
conceptualization of the periodization could capture the emergent and new nature of
world history and distinctive experiences of the Muslim world and other major historical-
cultural units without identifying the grand narrative with the history of Western Europe.

Hayrettin Yucesoy, Question 4

We are all aware that the models of global modernity and multiple modernities have
come to challenge the older model of European modernity. However, despite their
welcome contributions to non-Western histories, I think they still frame human history in
European terms and cling to the idea that history has led and is leading to something
higher, and perhaps even better. One reason why this is the case is perhaps we got
bogged down by our attention to imperial structures but paid much less attention to
micro-histories, small-histories, and histories of the little-people. Our chronologies and
periodizations still reflect the deeds and aspirations of an astonishingly miniscule
minority in history. It is important to recognize that the histories of this minority occupy
the largest part of our historiography and exercise tremendously disproportionate
influence on how we see history

Question 5 : Would you say that elements of and contributions to

global modernity emerged within Muslim Empires and through
interactions with other societies from 1300-1900? What were some
of these elements and contributions?

Jerry H. Bentley, Question 5

All societies in all continents and all islands participated in the construction of modernity.
It is possible to say that some made specific contributions, many of which had their
origins long before the era that we conventionally call modernity. Indian
mathematicians, for example, used symbols that Muslims called Hindi numerals and that
Europeans called Arabic numerals because Europeans learned about them from Arab
Muslims. Is it possible to conceive modernity as we conventionally know it in the absence
of Hindi/Arabic numerals? Would calculus be possible with Roman numerals?

There are many specific contributions with origins in Muslim societies that were crucial
for the development of sustainable agricultural societies that were foundations of
modernity. Irrigation technologies and the diffusion of food crops enhanced agriculture
across much of the eastern hemisphere. Muslim astronomical observations and
reasoning seem to have reached Copernicus and other astronomers of early modern
Europe, and to have influenced their views on alternatives to the Ptolemaic universe.

Now let me note that Muslim societies made some decisions that hindered their
possibilities of participating in the process of modernity. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, for example, they rejected adoption of two supremely important
inventions – the printing press and the telescope. These decisions do not necessarily
indicate a lack of intellectual curiosity, as one scholar has recently argued. Rather, my
suspicion (as one who is admittedly not expert in the issues) is that the decisions came
about as a result of power struggles in which the victors were religious authorities who
sought to suppress independent, secular groups that might constitute a challenge to
their privileged position in Muslim societies.

Edmund Burke III, Question 5

I am leery of approaches that seek to identify “contributions” to global modernity,
however denotated. For me, humanity is one, and the interconnecting societies of
Afroeurasia have continually interacted, sharing, perfecting and forgetting innovations
over the centuries while also dealing with a continually changing global environmental
and climatic conditions. Among these conditions , unprecedented human population
increase from 1400 CE, massive deforestation and the Little Ice Age, rank near the top
of the list. Key developments to which I would point include the conquest of the world’s
seas and oceans in the period 1400-1800, the full development of the potential of the
fiscal/military revolution, and the linking of the world’s regions by sea for the first time.
Major consequences include the development of a world economy and a global division of
labor as well as the changing location of the Middle East in the topology of global
exchange from the Mediterranean/Indian Ocean worlds to the Atlantic. Far-reaching
political and technological changes, connected to Europe’s privileged access to coal and
colonies did the rest.

Giancarlo Casale, Question 5

I am uncomfortable with the concept of “contributions,” to modernity, for reasons that I

have already discussed above. Instead I would go farther: rather than say that
interactions between Muslim empires another societies “contributed” to global modernity,
I would argue that modernity itself needs to be understood as a product of these (and
other) interactions.

Question 5, Stephen Dale

If I knew what global modernity meant, I might be better able to say. However, if it
means, as I think it does, various aspects of European civilization in the so-called early
modern era and later that contributed to European economic and military dominance, I
would have to say that these empires made no significant contributions, except that
trade with these states employed a lot of Europeans and helped to make some of them
very, very wealthy. However it is a mistake to believe that Eurasian trade was a novelty
in the age of European maritime expansion. Recent interest in the so-called Silk Road
has demonstrated the degree to which commerce flourished between major civilizations
and over long distances in the early Common Era, if not eearlier. Certainly in the
Ottoman case European culture had a major influence on a small section of Ottoman
culture, politics and military affairs. But did the Ottomans, Safavids of Mughal initiate or
preside over changes that are associated with “modernity,” whatever that is, I don’t
think so. Of course, these empires did build stunningly beautiful monumental structures,
patronize lovely art, including calligraphy, and crafts, and encourage some memorable
poetry, all of which testified to their wealth and cultural sophistication. But then these
achievements do not distinguish them from many ancient empires.

Nelly Hanna, Question 5

I would think that a lot of work could be done on the economic dimensions. Throughout
the period 1300-1800, for instance, textile production in the different parts of the
Ottoman world, was a major economic asset. Textiles were exported to many directions
(including Asia, the Americas). The know-how (especially in the 18th century) of these
textiles was transferred to European workshops. Much more research could be done
along this line in order to consider east west technology transfers. Some studies are also
considering a multi-focal approach in relation to the emergence of capitalism namely that
it may have had many forms, that these forms emerged in different parts of the world.
This is another avenue open for more research.

Patrick Manning, Question 5

- The rise and fall of large-scale enslavement combined to form one aspect of the
transition to global modernity, and it is well represented in Muslim Empires and other
parts of the Islamic world.

- The development of expanded imperial government, most notably in the Ottoman,

Iranian, and Mughal states--but also in Islamic states of other parts of Africa and Asia--
was part of a more general sequence of governmental changes.

- The expansion of European colonial rule from the 18th to the 20th centuries was a
significant if commonly negative aspect of the transition to global modernity.

- The place of Muslim Empires in the long-term changes of the global economy warrants
further study. The notion of the Great Divergence has now been developed rather fully
for East Asia -- the implications of this thinking for Muslim Empires and surrounding
areas would benefit from more study.

Andrew J. Newman, Question 5

There are two elements to this question. The first involves defining ‘global modernity’ in
such a manner as to distinguish it from earlier forms of globalization/internationalisation.
That definition process might usefully encompass more than just a focus on the ‘names
and dates’, that is change at the macro/elite levels, but that definition might well also
refer to the nature and pace of ‘change’ from ‘pre-modern’ to ‘modern’ among the
region’s non-elites. Such a broader remit would facilitate comparative discussions of the
changing circumstances of similar/corresponding elements in Europe, Africa, South
America, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, for example.

Toward the end of the period, it is clear that regions within these three polities, and
others as well, had become integrated into the ‘modern world market system’ as
peripheries both as the latter may be said to have encompassed new means of
manufacturing and finance. Some elements in these polities encouraged the processes
associated with this peripheralisation and others did not, just as this was
encouraged/opposed at what was becoming the metropolis itself.

Was there, question two, not also a ‘market of ideas’ involving the production of culture.
Does ‘modernity’ also involve, for example, the West-based ‘scientific revolution’? If so,
on a positivist note, ‘Western’ medicine may be said to have ‘abstracted’ several
processes associated with ‘local’ bodies of medical theory and practice on offer across all
three of the polities concerned. Plastic surgery is one such example. Vaccination, and
smallpox vaccination in particular, is another. But, on a broader level both may be said
to stand as an example of ‘cultural abstraction’ as the building of the Suez Canal or the
laying of telegraph lines in Iran let alone, although later, oil, may be said to exemplify/be
associated with ‘economic abstraction’. The ‘world market system’ must be defined to
include references to both.

Baki Tezcan, Question 5

Here I would go back to the point of mobility and suggest that as far as the exponential
growth of mobility is concerned, Muslim Empires –or at least the Ottoman Empire, which
is the one I know best and feel most comfortable talking about– did their share of
contributions to global modernity by providing opportunities for both physical and social
mobility. One should also note, however, that the contribution of northwestern Europe to
the emergence of global modernity has been much more influential in terms of
determining the outcome. To underline this point, I make a distinction between the early
modern period that is marked by physical and socio-political mobility and the modern
one that is shaped more profoundly by capitalism and colonialism. While the Ottomans
were as good of participants in the early modern period as anyone else in terms of social
mobility, they were not able to mobilize as much capital as the Dutch and the English did
during the seventeenth century thanks to their creative transformation of a medieval
concept, the corporation, into the joint stock company (the corporation had neither
existed in the Byzantine Empire nor the Islamic World).

If one considers the fact that global modernity, especially after the rise of capitalism and
colonialism, also includes such experiences as the genocidal destruction of native
cultures and populations, plantation slavery, and racism, perhaps the Islamic World did
just as well by not contributing as much to the creation of global modernity as did
northwestern Europe. As we are pondering the consequences of global warming for our
grandchildren, it might actually be instructive to look at the early modern Islamic World
and imagine the possibility of a different modernity that would keep its promise for social
mobility but not open its doors to unlimited capital accumulation in corporations that are
in effect legal persons and yet are devoid of the kind of responsibility that only a human
being can carry: the moral one.

References:
Henry Blount, Voyage into the Levant (London, 1634).

Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (New York, 2010).

Cemal Kafadar, “A Death in Venice (1575): Anatolian Muslim Merchants Trading in the
Serenissima, Journal of Turkish Studies 10 (1986): 191-218.

Cemal Kafadar, “The Question of Ottoman Decline,” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic
Review 4 (1997-98): 30-75.

Roger Owen, “The Middle East in the eighteenth century – an ‘Islamic’ Society in
Decline? A Critique of Gibb and Bowen’s Islamic Society and the West,” Review of Middle
East Studies 1 (1975): 101–12.

Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the
Early Modern World (New York, 2010) [pdf of Introduction and Conclusion available
online].

John Voll, Question 5

For understanding the role of Muslim political systems, economic networks, and religious
frameworks in the era from 1300-1900, it is most efficient to utilize a vocabulary that
does not tie the discussion to “modernity” as it is usually defined. Muslims played a
significant role in the dynamics of the “global convergences” in this era.

Muslim imperial systems, especially the Ottoman, were influential in the evolution of the
centralized “gunpowder empires” of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The
effectiveness of the centralized administrative bureaucracy and the power of the well-
trained standing army (with the Janissaries at its core) impressed diplomats and
travelers from both Europe and Asia. Similarly, Muslim production and distribution
networks were important parts of global trade, as reflected in the development during
the seventeenth century of cotton textile production in India and the emergence of
important coffee exporters in Southeast Asia. In religious terms, Muslim movements of
renewal and revival influenced not just the developments of culture and society in the
Middle East but also in India and Africa, and had some significance in shaping non-Han
communal identities in China.

Hayrettin Yucesoy, Question 5

For the purposes of this exercise we may use the label “Muslim Empires” to designate
empires making a sustained reverence to particular manifestations of Islam ubiquitous
among their subject populations, but at the end we must rethink terminologies such as
this as they confuse rather than clarify our thoughts. The question is not whether or how
“Muslim Empires” contributed to modernity, but how they have constructed and
perceived their own modernities, and how their involvement in and perceptions of global
interactions changed the way they live and experience life. As every society is the maker
of its own modernity with all of its complexity, we cannot pretend to construct a model,
European or non-European, and then judge various experiences according to it. We
therefore need a dedicated attention to non-European societies on their own terms, not
as subjects of European expansion and we need to consciously reject the temptation to
view modernity as a stage (similar to a finishing line in a race) in human history that
various societies reach after each other.