four hundred people have friended this journal; maybe one of you will know

[swan_tower]

Is there anyone reading this LJ who has a good familiarity with Middle Eastern history and/or folklore? I don't mean the ancient past (I got that covered), but rather from the beginning of the Islamic period forward. I am pig-ignorant of that subject, and could use a brain to pick in finding suitable readings for a particular purpose.

If that happens to be an area and time you're familiar with, please e-mail me off-journal -- marie (dot) brennan (at) gmail (dot) com.


Edited to add: Putting the history part in more specific terms, I need good books to read on the later Ottoman Empire. My knowledge of it pretty much ends at the name, alas.

Comments

[amysun.livejournal.com]

You might want to ask Yony. That might be a little late in history for him, but he's pretty well-read.

[tiamat360.livejournal.com]

Not sure if she's on your friends' list, but ophblekuwufu should be able to help :D.

[tchernabyelo.livejournal.com]

Halil Inalcik's "The Ottoman Empire 1300-1600" deals with its rise. I'm fainly confused because at one point you say "beginning of the Islamic period forward" (which means 700+, and you'll be talking about the Abbasid Caliphate and the like) but then your ETA talks about the later Ottoman Empire - which I would normally take to be post-Lepanto, beyond which the Empire was broadly static. But that's a thousand years later.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Folklorically, I'm interested in Islamic material. Historically, I'm interested in roughly the eighteenth century, but I expect I'll need to read about the background leading up to that point if I want to understand what I'm looking at.

[betsywhitt.livejournal.com]

Not sure how helpful this will be in the end, but I had a class on the history of the middle east, and several sections dealt with the Ottoman Turks. I kept the textbook specifically because it was thorough and fairly easy to understand. It's The Middle East: A History by William Ochsenwald. It's available on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0072442336/ref=nosim/librarythin08-20) or I suspect most university libraries will have a copy. Good luck!

folklore

[errol-q-spunkle.livejournal.com]

As for folklore, try reading Yasar kemal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya%C5%9Far_Kemal)

History? I think Lord Kinross is something I used way back in the day.
Also, Halil Inalcik really is a classic, even if it's two centuries too early.
I think the author Qaatert is an eminent? preeminent Ottoman scholar, but I remember reading one of his brief books and disliking it.
i'll see if I can remember others from my Turkish history class from 6 years ago.