Ep.104 - 10 Ottoman Myths Debunked with Dr Yakoob Ahmed

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There is a growing interest in Ottoman history. This has come from a recognition that an understanding of our Islamic history is necessary to carve our common Islamic future. But then the question arises, who writes this history? How do we know whether Ottoman historians, East and West, are purveyors of an orientalist narrative, slanted to match political interests? To untangle the facts from fiction, we have invited Dr Yakoob Ahmed who is an academic specialising in late Ottoman history. He is a PhD graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies and currently teaches Islamic history at Istanbul University. He is in the process of completing his first book on the late Ottoman ulema, to be published next year.

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Transcript

10 Ottoman Myths Debunked with Dr Yakoob Ahmed

This transcript was computer generated. Please check the transcript against the program for accuracy

There is a growing interest in Ottoman history this has come from a recognition. But an understanding of our history, Islamic history is necessary to carve our common Islamic future. But then the question arises, who writes this history? how do we know whether Ottoman historians East and West are purveyors of an Orientalist narrative slanted to match political interests. Today, to untangle the facts from fiction I've invited Dr Yakoob Ahmed. Dr Yakoob is an academic specializing in late Ottoman history, he is a PhD graduate of the school of Oriental and African studies, and currently teaches Islamic history at Istanbul University. He is in the process of completing his first book on late Ottoman ulama to be published next year Insha’Allah.

Dr Yakoob Ahmed, assalamualikum wa rahmatullah, and welcome back to The Thinking Muslim.

Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatulah, but not only welcome back. I am in the studio.

You’re in the studio, and I’m in your territory.

That’s right, and you’re wearing a suit for me as well. I appreciate it. Before we start, I was wondering can I get one of those Thinking Muslim cups?

Yeah, it’s yours, you can take it.

Well, we're planning to order because you're not the first one that ask that question, but I think I've decided, and I need to I need to buy this.

I'd like to have one of those in my house oh yes it would be our pleasure our honored for you to have it.

If someone doesn't go on the podcast, I can still say I did The Thinking Muslim.

BarakAllah Fik

No worries.

Well, as we know today, I've invited you to the podcast to look at some of the controversial topics surrounding the Ottomans. I've got 10 questions for you, these are the common questions I feel people ask about Ottoman history, and I want you to answer these questions and to give us your knowledgeable understanding of how we should view Ottoman history. So, by the end of this, I think you and I and our viewers should have a very comprehensive view of the controversy surrounding Ottoman history, let's say. So, let's start with question number one, it's a question that I find most often asked by people like me, people in the West and it's a question really linked to Ottoman decline, right. Now if we think about European decline, we realize that one of the key areas they suggest that when they look at European decline or they look at the dark ages of Europe they talk about how European Christianity banned the printing press, and the impact that had on knowledge production across Europe, right. In the same way we hear that the Ottomans banned the printing press. So, let's talk about the truth of that <, and whether that led or that kept Ottomans in a decline position when Europe was in its ascendancy, okay.

Now, what do you think I'm going to say about your question?

You're going to question my question, and say why am I asking that question, yeah.

That's right, and you know I've had this conversation on many occasions, yeah. Well I'll say it's the wrong question.

It's a question I've asked right now?

I will tell you why it's the wrong place, yeah. It's not that it's simply a wrong question, the whole Corpus of questions are wrong, and I tried to break the main into two sections. So, the first reason why the question is incorrect because what is it predicated it's predicated on an assumption; the assumptions in built in the question which gives me very little room to maneuver, okay right. So, what happens here is that where does that assumption come from, and that's the first question that needs to actually be answered, why is there an assumption in building this question, right. And so, the problem is for me, is if I try to answer this question, or I try to deconstruct the question by answering it. I become an apologist for the Ottomans, which is not what I try to do. I'm a historian, I want to teach history. I'm not a person who continuously needs to validate or prove or disprove something which is what these questions do. They become a series of questions, so it's not just one. And so, we'll have ten, and I'm sure that these ten they come in a block and what they do is they look at the large scope of 600 years of history, and every single question is not only independently predicated by an assumption but collectively they create an assumption that 600 years of Ottoman history is one which is negative, which is problematic, and so on. And so, you can't escape the paradigm that there is a problem here, so what happens then when you ask questions like this is I have to continuously fight back against this question because that's not how we would teach history, but that's how the Ummah have become accustomed to asking these questions to me whenever I'm sitting at a conference or minding my own business in the coffee shop which is, hey, didn't that happen? and then I have a situation which is okay it's not quite like that, and they'll say well what do you mean? And they want to enforce it and if I give them another contrary to what the question is asking they get upset.

Are you telling me about a coffee shop someone will come up to you and ask you a question about the printing press.

Sometimes, yeah really, because I mean I'll be honest. I'm a regular guy trying my own business, but these podcasts have done something, right. They've created someone like me a visibility which I shouldn't have but I've got it.

Alhamdulillah.

And so, people are often interested in Ottoman studies. I'll go to a Masjid in the UK or even in Turkey and somebody will say I saw you on the podcast, now is it true? so when it when it started off like that like I said it's predicated with an assumption so where is the assumption coming from. So that's the first question I'd ask them, where is this assumption coming from.

But you know, just to just to respond to that inevitably I live in the West, yeah. I've had some exposure to history, I studied history as a master's topic albeit I didn't study Ottoman history. So, I would have read books about the Ottomans, those books of course, would have come from the academy which is a Western Academy. And you know, I'm already aware of that when we think about Islamic history that the academy often gets it wrong and purposely gets it wrong. So, but nevertheless you know there is a discussion about these topics and many Muslims, I've heard Muslim Ulama discuss the ban in the printing press and how the Ottomans so inevitably we're going to have to find an answer to that question, right?

Yes and no, I mean look so like I said the problem is that, so what I do in my classroom is I just teach, and my students will go along with it. My students will never ask me the question, is it true that the printing press was the reason why we declined because we abandoned it. They would in fact ask me a different question. They would… I give an example, asked me a question of Ottoman decline they would ask me a question like how did they survive for 600 years, right. That's interesting for us, you know how do they stay in power this long, how is it possible that you know, the Arab rebellions only happened in WWI, they would ask me things like you know, how is it that we're writing these beautiful Qur’ans calligraphy that we have in this country that we see in the Masajids, and the museums all the time. So, for them the questions are not can you prove a dispute or something it's I'm teaching them the history and then they intrigued in something and then they respond to it right whereas here what's happening is what I'm saying to you is that very rarely does somebody ask me can you teach me something right. What's happening is I've got a question that you need to plug the gap for because I have this question, right. So, what I'm trying to do by deconstructing this one question but then the host of questions you have which create these collective, which is that we need to think differently which is that whatever someone has this question or a question of this nature like the printing press I will answer it, yes. But the point is that it's predicating an assumption where is that assumption coming from. That person needs to do they do diligence and say okay where did I read this where did I attain this information why is it so why is it common knowledge amongst us, and why is it that I hold this position. I think the 1950s is a turning point for the way that Muslims started to imagine themselves in the region they were in. So, the 1950s is you had Second World War, you then see Putin as a decline in power, losing his Empire. It happens to the French, happens to the Russians but what's intriguing about the French and British and Russians is they create an imagination that they are continuum of what came before. The Ottomans can't do that because they've collapsed, right. Then what happens in the 50s is you have the rise of Jamal Abdul Nasser coming into power in Egypt, Arab nationalism, or Nasserism, if you want to call it that. You then see the Cold War with the USSR. The United States of America totally changes the way that we perceive ourselves in terms of the world. Modernity as a narrative starts to become quite prevalent both in regards to what the Americans are saying but even as a response to that, what does it mean to be a modern national, what does it mean to be a modern citizen, what does it mean to exist in a modern world in progress, and so on. Right, what you see for Muslims at this time is they’ve become detached from the generations of people that may have been part of the Ottoman past. An example, Mustafa Sabri Efendi dies in 53, three four months before Jamal Abdul Nasser comes to power. There's a host of people that pass away in this generation at this time.

Who is Mustafa Sabri?

So, Mustafa Sabri Efendi would have been a shaykh in Islam on the Ottoman Empire, you know, a senior scholar senior scholar during WWI, yeah. But also, was a senior scholar during the time of Sultan Abdul Rehman II right. So, you see a generational shift this is why it's intriguing to notice when do the Muslim movements start to come into existence in the 50s and 60s right. There's a turning point in that sense, and what is the narrative that's been promoted here it's in response to Arab nationalism, it's in response to Communism, and it's in response to American capitalism. And so, you start to see a lot of these narratives that then have to go back in time, and say that went wrong and this is what we need to achieve right. But there's no writing taking place about Ottoman history in these countries, yeah. It's irrelevant, because at the time you're fighting for something else, the emergence of the new nation states, the removal of monarchies, the emergence of dictatorships, or mental dictation.

How do they build this narrative, you know, How does someone in Egypt in the 1950s or in Palestine in the 1950s…

You know, Arab nationalism was not alien to what was taking place in Western Academia, Arab nationalist thinkers, in particular, were interacting with works that are taking place in the Western academic world, right. So, in the 1950s is where you get the emergence of the modernization theory, right. Bernard Lewis and so forth, they push this out there.

The modernization theory is what?

Is that the nation-state is a natural consequence of the modernization of the Ottoman lands, and that was going to happen inevitably there's an inevitability in terms of that. That's not necessarily true, they take out all the struggles and fights and so forth, right.

But how does a modernization vary link to the fall of the Ottomans?

So, basically the Ottomans are secularizing to modernize, and that's naturally what's taking place here, right. And they need to secularize in order to be modern okay. Now Muslims take exception to that, but they buy into the theory, they say of course that's what happens that's where we are where we are at, right. And now if you're in Malaysia or in Pakistan you've got other projects going on Ottoman history is irrelevant to you. So Western Academia in particular becomes the bastion on the writing of Ottomans.

So, let me get that straight, and I've studied a little bit of Bernard Lewis, and I've looked through his work. So, his argument is bad. Muslims around particular status they were once a great Empire then Western industrialization comes along, they have to respond to that right but there is something within Islam and Muslims that prevents them, that's right, by responding to the modernization of the European state and so they start this blatter around they tried to modernize but it never really gets to that point. And, inevitably then the Ottomans have to decline and have to the Ottoman state collapses because it fails to modernize and keep up with the West, right. Is there a problem with that narrative?

Yeah, there is because it basically modernity as a subject itself creates a particular dichotomy which you can't escape, okay. Okay so if you said to your students are we modern, it's a bogus question but it's a trap question; you either say yes we are modern which then suggests that in order to be modern we are willing to make certain concessions, or you say we are not modern which then makes you look like you're not part of the civilized world and you're backwards, so you get trapped by this question here. Islam should not be compared to modernity in some ways. So, the question is, is that how do we then make the case for Islam in the contemporary period without having to grapple with this framework which is modernity, very difficult to do.

Okay but you know modernity is a very abstract idea maybe and it's a very big idea, but let's talk about industrialization, right. You know the Japanese were able to industrialize, it's the first Eastern power that was able to industrialize and

the Japanese faced Western colonialism, yet they were able to turn it around very quickly, the Ottomans failed to do that, is an array…

No, they didn't fail to do that, that's not the next… See that's the narrative, I mean Japan is not comparable to the Ottoman Empire, okay. I mean we've got an Empire that's stretching across three continents, Japan is a series of violence, but having said that. I mean the Japanese in 76 made a visit to Istanbul, the Japanese in 1880 made a visit to Istanbul. They were very interested in what Istanbul was doing in regards to their we use the word modernity here, modernization that was on the one hand Asiatic something that they can learn and understand from, but at the same time part of the Contemporary world because the Japanese were very concerned about what's taking place in Western Europe and so forth and they saw the Ottomans interestingly enough as a what the they saw them as the furthest Western Asiatic Empire, and the only Muslim European Empire, right. And there's one not just the Japanese it was Chinese as well. Now there is critique culture in Japan and China in relation to the Ottoman Empire and that happens a lot this critique culture with the Ottomans as well, but there's also critique culture regarding the British, right. This has happened across the board, but the difference is that, where is Ottoman history written? Yes. It's certainly not written in the Muslim world, right. Okay so, that… That's we have to ask ourselves why, it is written in Western Academy, so Japan today has between 23 to 27 Ottoman historians in the in the country.

No way, really?

Yeah, quite often I know this sorry, how many Ottoman historians would you find in Malaysia or Pakistan, right. Or even the Arab world combined I mean there are some really good Arabic Otto academics, in fairness, yes. But the point I'm trying to make is the investment there. The state of Israel in terms of its investment in Ottoman studies and Islamic Studies is it's just crazy in Western Academy, in comparison to another Muslim country in the region. And that's because the Muslim countries in the region themselves are trying to grapple or at least ignore or deny a particular Ottoman past. And when they do talk about the Ottoman past it has to be framed as a decadent past, which legitimizes whatever system we have today. The only other country that has a decent job in terms of

Ottoman studies is Turkey and that's because Turkey has not been able to escape the Ottomans. It's here, but fundamentally from the 19th century onwards what you're seeing is Ottoman studies and Islamic Studies as a Western enterprise, right. It happens in Western universities, they have a particular interest in Islam, they have a particular interest in Ottoman history, and those continues those state and those two departments remain independent from one another, some blurring of the lines do take place, yeah. But that's exactly what happens in the Muslim world that is not an investment an investment. In Islam for example, why would we do Islamic Studies we have a limiting time so that's not important, right. But Ottoman in history in particular… Now there is a situation here in which no one is interested in, yeah.

So are you saying that the Arab nationalists who in a way were responding to Western modernity or at least Western imposition in Arab countries, they were learning from Western Academia, Western intellectual history, yeah. And they had effectively adopted the narrative that the West presented about Ottoman decline.

It's a strange anti-Western Westernism, right. That's interesting so in some ways is very

anti-Western I mean you can see the critique of, but it still hasn't been able to find its place in the region at the time, right. I mean it's like I said WW II happens the Ottoman Empires collapse before that, yeah. You've got your own nation states and then the rise of Arab nationalism and the shifts that and then the Cold War, and how these Arab states become proxies for these two entities, right. And within that framework you have to then create a particular understanding of the past, but you have to also create a particular understanding of the now. So, history and maybe we should have started this in first place. So, what is history, what are we doing here, and a lot of, you know, people who do other fields like Islamic Studies or whatnot; all believe they're historians, because they didn't want to double in the past, everybody does, right. So, the assumption is okay, we understand history is not necessary but there's a difference between reading about the past and being a historian, and reading about the past is just knowing about things that happen. But history is an intellectual and ideological endeavor, that's what's actually taking place here. And so, a historian when they're going back in time they know that they're not simply going back in time, they're addressing the question of an interest that people have today, that's what it's about. So, I give an example of Qur’an just to help: Surah Yusuf, Surah Yusuf is something that it's a beautiful Surah from Allah ta’ala, and for, me as a historian, it's the one that helps me the most, why, beginning and middle and end, right. It's just, and Allah ta’ala says in Surah Yusuf: this is a story, right. And at the end of the Surah He says that, and this is a story for the people of understanding. So what Allah ta’ala does in Surah Yusuf in particular is He wants you to contemplate each ayat about the life story of Yusuf a.s, and what he goes through really. But whose Surah Yusuf really about, it's not simply about Yusuf a.s, it's about Rasull saw, because also Rasul saw, goes through the year of sadness, the issues in Tayyib, and he's having difficulties. And then Allah ta’ala then sends this sorted to him, and tells him that there are things like that you know not as a way of highlander, so Rasull saw has his resolved so what you realize here is the present and the past are interacting and Allah ta’ala is Rasul saw, about Yusuf a.s only which is what is significant to Rasul saw, and for us later on. So He, you become very selective in the information you give, and the information He's given to Rasul saw is to help him through that difficulty that he was going through and it's a beautiful story and it's a beautiful way of telling it and what you then learn from the Qur’an itself is that much of history is the way that you tell narrative, and stories, right. That's important and that's what historians are doing fundamentally, is they are constructing narratives for you and sometimes these narratives are addressing the Zeitgeist of the time and sometimes these narratives are for historians to establish the Zeitgeist. That's what they do in that sense right. And so what's for me the time zone this is what Muslims have stopped at they've Frozen in time but they're still stuck with these like questions which come in in a list format, right.

Like my list today

Which is fine, because this is exactly because you're reflecting exactly what's happening right. And this is why like when you read Ibn Khaldoun people don't really don’t know Ibn Khaldoun much but if they should, they do, they should. The introduction of Ibn khaldoun's Muqqadimah is about history writing first, he starts off with why history is important before all the civilizational things that he gets involved in. Umran itself is not simply civilizational that's a modern sort of like interpretation of explaining his ideas, what is more interesting is the disposition of human beings; the nature of people themselves right. And he said the reason why we do history is we are truth seekers and we are truth speakers we want to establish the closest to the truth so that insan may learn something from what people had done before right. And so he makes this case there are two types of historians, right: in the bottom the simple historians, and the more deep thinking history right because it's a simple historians they just want to tell stories to rouse the crowd, it sounds great, and snippets, short bites. You know, maybe like a YouTube video telling a story blah blah blah blah blah. He said that but what's of real value is the deeper history: why did this happen, how did this happen, have a nuance in it, have a sympathy you have an understanding of the nature of human beings and the reason why this is important is because when human beings for example in Seerah when they see the complexity of the lives of the Muslims the lives of the Sahaba the way that Rasul saw, also some interacts with them then they start to not feel guilty in themselves, that there's something wrong with me that as human beings this is our fitrah, human beings are continuously going to be doing things in life which are both positive and negative. And so, it's not only that we then look at the life of Rasul saw, we then look at the journey that Muslims have gone through for 1400 years, and say we're still here, we still exist and all of this that's taking place it's not simply, we're going to learn from it. But it's a reflection of the just the nature of human beings and then we can understand politics better, we can understand society better we can understand economics better and so forth right. So what's it what upsets me a little bit at times is that. So, I was at a conference once and one of the speakers said can you give me the great moments of the Ottoman past so that we can have pride in Ottoman history, and I said to that person like I said to you it's an inquiry question. And they said what do you mean? I said you need to take pride in yourself right now. That's the issue. So you need to feel comfortable as a Muslim today. You need to have pride in alhamdulillah you’re Muslim, alhamdulillah you exist this is you know when you're seeing for example when you're watching UFC and you see Khabib Nurmagomedov jumping off the and you know a lot of Western like commentators go what the hell is going on here this is a Muslim, alhamdulillah. He should jump off the fence, yes. It's because it's a particular feeling it's a particular sentiment. When Muslims are doing sujood the football field that resonates with me they want to feel a sense of pride a sense of honor and they want to feel that in their history because they know tacitly at least that the way the history has been given to them is not given to them in a way or the way that they understanding it even from their own even for Muslims who are asking these type of questions that it doesn't feel very positive it feels very negative 600 years of negativity the whole Ottoman Empire is a mess why am I doing this why am I learning this so they turn to me and say can you tell us something positive question. You need to take pride in yourself who you are and once you've done that and your Aqeedah should not be shaken by what Muslims did in the past put the other side. Your aqeedah is your aqeedah, once you understand that then let's do the past let's do what Muslims did and let's like understand that and let's help you navigate it so that you can better place yourself in the timeline of history. Say I deserve to exist I'm not, that's not I shouldn't be ashamed of existing we're not that bad as everyone else and that throughout history there's these ups and downs and we're going to keep going through it but the idea of a 600 year decline imagine like how do you explain that to Muslims, for 600 years we've been nothing. That's a very difficult pill to take.

But I suppose, what we're trying to understand that, you're right, so we're thinking about history and how that history informs our decline state today or our problematic state today, or the position of the Ummah. So certainly, I'm coming from, I suspect my question implicitly they're trying to search for the present, they're trying to work out, why are we who we are today and why are we you know in such a powerless state, right. But coupled with that yes, we've adopted a narrative with your question in here. But you know, at some point there was a fault line that belongs that existed within the Muslim Ummah and that fault line led to a series of tragic events which culminated in the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. Now, your question in whether that narrative is actually that linear.

We'll look at the gaps, right. Look at the gaps in the six hundred… We jump bang, bang.

So, you've got ups and downs.

So, I mean look, we… The idea that a civilization go whoop, yeah. And then down yeah, and which is what we've internalized.

Great sound effects.

Thank you very much, yeah. It didn't work like that yeah actually it's peaks and troughs, ups and downs. I mean, I always use this analogy just to help people understand, yeah, I've got a football team like Liverpool Football Club, they had their heydays in 1980s struggled in 1990s, come back; this is ups and downs, even in the lowest moments they're still winning trophies, haven't they? Yes, yeah. So in in that sense what you see is not always this case that it's a 600 year collapse it's possible to argue and a fairer argument would be that something happened in the last 20 years right. In 20 a 20-year all right let me put it this way, it's

about imagination, okay. And how Muslims imagine, see when you're reading a history book sometimes people don't appreciate, 600 years is a very long time right, imagine how many days are in 600 years and how many hours yeah but when we're reading it we're time skipping we're flying through it and assuming it's all part of the same period, time period. And so, a lot of times we have a very sort of like skewed understanding of time in of itself we can't actually place time in our head in regards to the imagination. So, what happens is they don't realize that there's huge things that are happening in these time spaces, but they think that they happen in one after the other and they just this collapse and it's taking place. But it's what we see in the Ottoman Empire, because they've been around for 600 years so it's a good survey in some ways, we can actually see peaks and troughs that we heard, we were unable to see in the Abbasid or Umayyad period because those were smaller time frames right in many ways, right. And so what we see is ups and downs extreme ups extreme lows and find where the Ottomans were unique is the way that they could re-transform and revive themselves continuously and it's true that they were not always on par with the Western powers and so forth and that is an example of that but it would make more sense to make the argument that in the last 20 years perhaps right that there was a particular struggle that created a particular combustion.

Okay so, with all of that meta-analysis aside and I think it's a what you've laid down the foundations that I think we could probably have an entire session

just on those foundations.

Yeah, invite me again.

I certainly need to; I don't have enough mugs left to invite you for… So, indulge me… Let's go back to the printing press.

So, printing press…

Did the Ottomans ban the printing press?

No.

Okay

Okay but let's entertain this question, yeah. When did the Western Powers get the printing press first time? would you reckon…

Yeah, was it a 17th century…

Actually, before that…

Before that really

1464, right so that's quite interesting 1460, 1470 is either the British or the Germans there's a contestation regarding you're good at first, yeah. There was still with that that's the problem… What is happening in Istanbul in 1450s and 60s?

You tell me…

Find this for yourself.

Okay

So, we've seen a totally different world like where you've got a print machine created in Western Europe, but at this time photos conquered in Istanbul. I wouldn't consider that a decline because he's not using the printing press. Now, throughout that time, and we see this with the fall of Andalusia where Jews and Muslims come from Spain to the Ottoman Empire and are permitted Jews in particular and Armenians, and Greek Orthodox Christians are permitted to use a printed press right, no problem against them, yeah. Because the script that they're using is conducive towards the printing press. Separated letters and so forth. Now there's a narrative that Bayezid, Sultan Bayezid past a fatwa to ban against the printing impress.

What was the time period…?

It's in probably, because it is…before Fatih or after Fatih, my numbers are not great. But the idea is that if Bayezid puts out to ban the printing press, it's a phantom fatwa. Doesn't exist.

Really

But we've internalized it. I've been looking for this fatwa for years, just because Muslims have been insistent that it exists, right. Now, it's known that the French, 19th century, French orientalist popularized this theory and Lewis writes it, yes. But what possibly would have happened is Sultan Bayezid would have said: we're not printing Qur’ans, because at the time we have to be honest, we have to ask ourselves what was being printed, okay. So, if Muslims are falling behind what is being printed exactly.

You mean in Europe…

In Europe, okay. And it's not Shakespeare, because those are plays that people got a theater for. So, it's Bibles, it's religious texts religious books. Now, Muslims are producing literature of the same volume, but it's written by hand, why? And you've been to the museums in Istanbul, you've seen the Qur’ans and the way that they beautified them. The consumer market would not accept and tolerate a Qur’an or books of religion that looks splodgy with… Instead, they want to beautify them so to make a comparison at this moment of literacy is also doesn't make sense because we really don't have the type of data that we're asking for in terms of literacy comparison. But books are being produced, we know this right. All right, then the next thing is that when they're producing these books we have scribes, khutab, khat... They write doing calligraphy, that was an important business in the Ottoman Empire right so for them the idea of losing the possibility of doing that, and then the third part is the Muslim tradition is a tradition with or tradition matters, right. And a written tradition they're side by side but the way that we learn is different. In the West you could take a book you give it to someone they read it and in the Islamic world books were written to be taught so you'll have one book 50 students, and a teacher would teach it right, right. You go to a mosque, sit down the congregation you read it out perhaps maybe they memorized it and so forth. So, it's still not telling us about the literacy comparison so what's the problem here there's a comparison taking place regarding Western Europe, all right. When does Western Europe actually get a printing press as you said Industrial Revolution? 1700s, when does Ibrahim Muteferrika produce a printing press in Istanbul? 1727 Okay. Okay so now we see that actually the Ottomans do have a printing press machine that produces an Arabic or an Ottoman Turkish in the same way that they do in the West. Having said that, Muteferrika does have some challenges, but the challenge is, once again, are not coming from the Sultan himself. Is that they don't have consumer marketers willing to read in this way still, right. But by the 1800s now with the Industrial Revolution, the introduction of steam, and the paper revolution in the forms a paper we're now starting to see the production of newspapers, journals, novels, fiction, and books and so forth. And then you start to see the production of the printing press across the world in the same way. And they never had their difference of opinion about what should be put into what not to be printed. And then Qur’an becomes printed very late. Now a lot of the books that we have today in our libraries The Gazalis and the Tamiers and so forth. This was because of the Ottoman printing press, because that manuscript culture before in the olden days you'd have to go and pull a manuscript out of some library in Damascus or go to an island and say do you remember such and such. So, the printing press gave us the books that we're reading today, not only that the Qur’an we read today the mushafs that we have only exist because of the printed press. Prior to the printing press there was no mushaf, because people

would not have been interacting the Qur’an in the same way.

What about coffee? So, again linked to that question, the argument goes that even the most frivolous of issues coffee was banned by the Ulama at the time, the sheikh al Islam had a fatwa against coffee when it entered the Ottoman lands. Is there a truth to that?

Okay so, but we've established…Are you happy with the printing press?

We're happy with the printing press.

Right, so because I tell you why also one last thing before we move on is that Kemal Karpat who's a famous academic who passed away. He had published a book about literacy rates in the Ottoman Empire in the Hamidian period and he made up these interesting numbers and people ran with it, and numbers have never been able to be substantiated, really. It felt like a lot of Ottoman historians felt like that was a fudge and then Cem Bahar, who’s an academic in Turkey, actually looks at those numbers and says they don't make sense, they don't add up.

So, these are very low numbers?

Exactly they show in very low numbers in comparison, yeah. The censuses were done differently, so the census in the Ottoman Empire would be one per household, all right, so if there's five people in the household it's one if there's 20 people in the household it's one. Data collection is different, so I just needed to put that out there as well yeah because this continual. Look, I don't want to go back to Rasul saw, but I am going to do on this occasion, yeah. For example, firstly my mother my mother's not illiterate because she can't use her laptop very well. She can still use the pen. Right. Cause an ayat in the Qur’an, Rasul in the Qu’ran, kind of… Rasul saw…Okay we as Muslims are some of the most educated people in the world. Islam encourages, that Islam encourage writing, but Rasul saw was still not

somebody who's really invited, you can see that would they be here. So, what you see here is there's not an imposition or a reflection of intelligence based on the fact that you can read and write your pen, because we judge intelligence in a totally different way in terms of our civilization.

Oral tradition, people are learning through…

I think what I'm trying to say is that in our tradition the oral tradition and reading tradition coincide, and the oral tradition is just as valuable and valid as to reading tradition, right. But when we're making the assumption about the literacy rates or the decline of the Ottomans or Muslims in particular we're saying Muslims, yeah. Because we don't only talk about the Ottoman Empire Robinson was talking about this, about regarding India that Muslims in India had banned the printed press, and so on, right. So this is something that's stuck with Muslims which is we’re just ignoramicists because we're not using this machine. Not necessarily true, right and so once again it goes to my point about pride now. In the past so now people say this doesn't prove anything in reality the way I've tried to answer your question is I've tried to unpack it a little bit to show that maybe the way that the question is so narrow is not helping and understanding exactly what's taking place regarding the Muslim world.

But I think it's a very useful answer, because of course we've grown up knowing, believing in a narrative that there were some issues within Islamic scholarship that prevented modernization, in inverted commas, and you've, you know in a way you've burst one of those bubbles. You've suggested that there is just no evidence to say that the Ottomans banned the Ottoman press, and anyway you know the way knowledge production happened in Ottoman territories was completely different to how we imagined knowledge production today. I get that I think that's a really a great answer. But back to my coffee point.

Starbucks.

Yes, so what how do we understand the arguments, because in a way that's another argument presented by people like Lewis, yeah. That, you had, you know coffee is not a problematic drink by any means, right. Yet it was banned by Ottomans.

So, let me ask you a question.

Go ahead.

I guess we live in a world now where we become accustomed to drinking coffee, large amounts of it, yes. You go to the Starbucks, or the Third Way coffee shops, or so right, yeah. Who cares, what if I said that to you, okay. So, how's that an indication of the decline, that they said you can't drink coffee.

Yeah, no I don't think it's. You're right, and once you ask the question, you're thinking okay wait a minute how does that link to losing a war, right. But I suppose the point is we do have some fragments of that thinking today. You have ulama today, who say this is haram

without really studying what the this is. AI is haram, right, right. Or I don't know, Bitcoin is right, I don't know.

But is that unanimous, that position?

No, okay no.

So, already for us, who are in the tradition, yeah. We know there's a plurality of voices okay yeah it's a fatwa, an opinion you don't have to follow it.

Sure.

Okay.

That doesn't mean I'm not answering the question about the Ottomans here yet. But what I'm trying to do is deconstruct your question, okay, all right all right which is that why is it that we've become so obsessed with this idea that they were not allowing people to drink coffee so something like horribly wrong, yeah, right. In actuality, coffee from time to time was bad in the Ottoman Empire, but the substance wasn't banned itself so when you look at the factors it's interesting, they don't there, are some ulama who are intrigued about the possibility and we have to be fair to them. Imagine for the first time you've got a substance which people haven't interacted with much, and people drink this substance and they stay awake all day and you're asking yourself is this an intoxicant or not. Throughout Islamic history like Khamr wasn't just like you know alcohol, it was people were fermenting rice, people were fermenting dates, grapes and every time somebody drank something it was like, you know what, what is that? Oh, it's just vinegar, is it vinegar? is it barley, is it boza

like they have in Turkey. What is it? is it kombucha that people are drinking today that are fermented tea? And then when they drink it, and they say people are kind of losing their heads with this that's going to be khamr, now with coffee, coffee was complicated because it's a stimulant, for sure so throughout Islamic history not just in the Ottoman context where certain ulama would have looked at that substance and said something's not right with it. like Khat that they chew in Yemen, and in Somalia and so forth right. And even with hashish there was a difference of opinion on that right, yes. In that sense and ulama would have looked at that and said that's a drug, you can't smoke that right now what's intriguing is that the majority of the ulama when they would have tried to ban coffee would have been because of the coffee houses, which would have been the Twitter spaces of that time where a lot of Muslims would have gathered, had discussions, and so forth. So, what was the fatwa, the fatwa was actually the banning of the coffee houses because the fires that they used to make coffee, the houses are made for mods, they start fires in the city and they're dangerous. They didn't actually go after the substance itself they actually had a more complicated view of tobacco, because tobacco and coffee came at the same time, and tobacco is also interesting because certain ulama have said in the past that tobacco is mubah or makrooh because why, because they would say yeah, well they're just chewing it doesn't do any harm to them and in Arabic people say you drink tobacco, now nobody drinks tobacco. So, what they did because those shisha pipes, right. There’s bubbling and so forth yeah. So, the ulama would have looked at tobacco as well and said what's going on here. Now, we've accepted a tobacco issue but we haven't accepted coffee issue yes in reality the Ottomans are what the people that gave Europe coffee it was during the time of Suleiman Magnificent the Europeans discovered coffee because of the Ottomans, and throughout the 500 years of Ottoman history different Sultans had an issue with people collecting together in spaces where they could do certain activities against us all the time so they needed to find ways of obstructing that especially when the janissaries in particular, became the coffee houses, became a way where they could make money and be semi-independent or independent from the Sultan himself. And so, they needed to be a way to try to stop the janissaries from having this major source of income, which is and so on.

So, this is akin to either regulating Twitter, regulating social media, possibly.

Yeah of course, yeah, I mean but even today okay. Let's just say this khalifa existed you know, and he turns around and says I'm banning coffee, yes what are you gonna do, like and today, even today some ulama will say: you heard, and you obey. He said ban coffee, he says coffee is not good for you we're not drinking coffee, and other people go what are you talking about? we love this beverage you know, so it's it for me when I hear the issue of coffee and people bring this to the table I find it laughable, I think okay I get it but it's just coffee, yeah. But the importance of coffee is that it has a political component, that's what they target, right. Per se, but they can't ban the substance, yes you have to find different ways of and even when they did stop people from drinking the substance people were still drinking coffee okay. And then they had to find ways of loosening that.

Okay, great. Now, I think you've cleared that up, so let's then talk about something maybe a little bit more substantial than coffee. There is a, and maybe this comes out of the 1950s and 60s and Arab nationalism and there is this belief, especially amongst Arabs, that the

Ottomans persecuted Arabs and persecuted minorities, yes. Certainly, there is a discussion about non-Muslim minorities, especially during the latter period, but I think there is this heavy view a very strong view about the Ottomans repressed Arab identity in the 600-year history of the Ottomans. I mean how do you, how do you respond to that?

Well, firstly the Ottomans were already in charge of the Arab provinces for 400 years okay so 400 years yeah. Now the question it's an interesting one because we said Arabs and non-Muslims which make up the majority of the Empire, right. So, that means everybody was being persecuted apart from the Turks, which it when you look at it when you making me think of it that it just sounds ridiculous. Now, Murat Bardaçi who's a famous journalist in this country, and also a historian, he said something which was interesting for me when he was talking about Erdoğan, and he said that the term that they used for the Arabs, the Ottomans in particular especially in the Hamedian period is najib milneth which means like the great milneth the auspicious milneth the lofty milneth, yeah right. This is the term that's used for Turks these days it's used in the Turkish Republic; they use it for the Turks but at the time they were using it for the Arabs. Now why were they using it for the Arabs, because there's a recognition amongst the Ottomans. They're not that the Arabs are special or better than anyone else but there is a recognition that Islam came via the Arab tradition, and that the Arab provinces in particular have a particular tendency and a reality of the practicing of Islam, which is something that the Ottomans are proud of, and that they are part of a world that includes the Arab right. So, let's look at Selim, Sultan Abu Selim III, Selim the Great, whatever style of History you want to do, yeah. And when Selim conquers the Arab provinces, what we're seeing is that Mamluki Scholars are already engaging with Istanbul prior to Selim’s Conquest. So, I went to a presentation by a friend of mine, and he gave a wonderful presentation about Kasim Soldier. I should mention his name so that people can check him out and he did his preach that Binghamton University he wasn't Imam in the States, and he now teaches Islam here, and he did his PhD on Scholars. A particular scholar but Scholars from the Mamluki period who were coming to Istanbul during Faith’s conquers of Istanbul meaning there's already an interaction between the ulama regarding the Ottoman Empire and the Arab world, prior to Selim's conquest of the Arab provinces. Now, what's intriguing is for Selim later to come and make his reign possible, it would have, only have been possible if the ulama in the Arab provinces, to some degree, then found a language that legitimizes what they have done, right. And to some degree what you see is after Selim, what does Selim do he starts to decorate the Aqsa, and he starts, and Suleiman must master it and so forth, why because they they're trying to attain the legitimacy of the people they're not trying to they could have crushed them, they're not trying to do that they crushed the Mamluks which is a particular form of power, but Society by and large, they were not attempting to do that, they have continuously tried to win them over. And I'll give you an example about the Ottomans, early Ottomans when the early Ottomans, Osman, Orhan, Murat, when they guide into the Balkans in particular they know that false conversion is problematic, it's not part of the intention what the intention is, is to not agitate the defeated peoples to make sure that Muslims don't live in close proximity to non-Muslims, to have the idea of trying to find the ways of appeasing the elites and making them feel part of the Ottoman territories, so that they don't rebel against them. It's not like the American way where you have to put boots on the ground because that's what you'd have to do if it's aggressive you have to put boots on the ground so how do you survive without boots on the ground, you have to use other mechanisms and policies for people to accept you as an authority and the fact that that had happened in the Arab prophecies for so long gives an indication that this, this relationship afterwards became reciprocal. It's only during the latter end of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, where many of the particular Arab Elites became disenfranchised with The Young Turks in particular not Abdul Hamid, but The Young Turks more specifically. That you start to see an agitation towards that, and then when Arab nationalism kicks in later, then you start to see the creation of this idea that the Ottomans had always oppressed the Arabs but that's just not a feasible way of thinking about it. Because it was it wouldn't have been possible to rule over the Arabs for that long it just wouldn't have happened.

So, let's then talk about the Christian minorities within the Ottoman realms. There was a system called a Devshirme system where Christian families from the West, they had to give their elder son or at least the son to the Ottomans, and that son in effect was treated as a slave, yeah. And was integrated within the Ottoman Army so there was a system of slavery, no. Now, looking back at you know, that system that sounds like a very problematic system, right. How do you understand, I mean unpick, I hope Devshirme is showing me idea for me.

So, what's your imagination of that, what do you imagine?

Well, of course you know, most people when they think about slavery, they think about how the Americans treated, yeah. You know, the slaves on the plantations, for example.

When you hear stories of like the Ottomans are taking people's kids away.

Well, that sounds pretty cruel, right. You're taking someone's child away.

That’s what the imagination is right, yeah. The Ottomans are looking in every household just pulling these children away say goodbye, yeah. That's not actually what happened, okay. Now, once again I'm not trying to defend Ottoman slavery, I think in the Ottoman World in particular slavery and conscription, as they become amalgamated it's a very complicated area space, which people need to study more, right. Conscription even today is a complicated space. Actually, if you're part of the Armed Forces you're virtually a slave of the state, you have very little choice right. And in the armed forces they don't want people to have choice anyway, they want you to obey whatever orders they give you. Otherwise, you're going to choose not today and that's why war in of itself becomes gruesome because you see war crimes being done by particular peoples, because particular commanders would just tell them to obey. Even during moments of the military cruise that take place regular soldiers are just obeying orders, right. And so, soldiers and conscriptions are just there's a complexity in itself. And the sort of like the way that we understand violence may need a better treatment, than the way that we're understanding it right now. Once again, I'm not trying to legitimize it but I'm trying to frame something that can help understand what's going on here now. All right now, that we've got to that point the Mongol world was a very violent world, the Mongols were taken slaves. Christendom was also taken slaves, so this is not an Ottoman construct, the world around you is taking slaves go

over defeat you, take slaves prisoners of the wars, women, children, slaves are taken. What the Ottomans did which was different, which is interesting in some ways is that if you are an area which surrendered before you fought them then they wouldn't take any children or conscription. If you are a place that resisted what you would have expected is everybody to just get blitzed because that's what happened, but he always didn't do that instead they turned around and said all right look what we're going to do is we're going to give you the choice of giving us one child from every 40 households. Now, in those days so people would have been communal society, so you notice like people would convert on mass Villages would convert, one guy, everybody converts, right. So, the communities would have got together, and made a choice probably of which children they are going to send to this conscription service. As a result, those people will join the conscription service, get an education which was obviously an Islamic education that's the only thing the Ottomans knew. Gave him Islamic education gave him probably a stipend and gave them the possibility of growing up the ranks, and even becoming Grand Vizier, right.

Are there examples of Christians who in effect became noble men in within the Ottomans.

Okay, Mimar Sinan, famous one.

The architect?

The architect.

He was a Christian?

Yes.

Right, so what would happen then is, but what is the system trying to do, okay. The system is trying to do this: see, on the one hand we could give you the same type of punishment everyone else has given you, but we're not going to do that what we're doing is we're going to find a different way of integrating you within they're sort of like political space you're going to send your kids over to us, we're going to educate them we're going to put them in the armed forces and we're going to give you a little maybe it's not always the case to give

you a stipend or whatever but these kids will become soldiers, noblemen and so forth and then the areas which have sent these children would have felt a sense of attachment to the center and the interesting thing here is the antagonism that we think that existed between Islam and Christianity, needs a better treatment, because the antagonism between Christianity and Christianity was greater, right. So, one Christian area would have been far more barbaric to another group of Christians in the Balkans than the Ottomans would have. So, the Ottomans use a different strategy, they said we can't replicate the strategies that the Mongols had used, or these guys were using; we'll use a different type of conscription and the reason why they needed a conscription server is possibly because they don't have an infinite amount of soldiers so…

Why can't I recruit from Muslims…

And Muslims to join them anyway, but once again like I said, in the Balkans which is predominantly an Ottoman project where fundamentally the largest group of people were non-Muslims. When people forget they said the Ottoman Empire for most of its time was a Muslim entity where predominantly people were non-Muslims, right. Right, that was the strategy that they probably chose to use at the time, now we can still dislike that I'm not against Muslims to say I don't like that that's okay yeah, and Muslims can critique that and the ulama when they're going to the fiqh books and say that's unacceptable they can do that too, but what I'm trying to do by answering this question is to give that nuance to the question, because what when I asked you what is your imagination, this is the point I was trying to make, that we have an inbuilt imagination about what we assume was happening and in reality what was probably happening was something very different in that sense and we forget that it's a violent mode.

So, do we have any accounts of how Christians, Christian parents, how Christian communities viewed this Ottoman imposition.

I haven't read the accounts personally, but I've spoken to colleagues and yes there would have been certain people that would have been unhappy about that of course, yeah. I mean who likes to be defeated at war, right, and who likes to be taken as a slave but over a prolonged period of time in the world that they're in this is a particular system that they would have tolerated over the system that existed, right. And they would have found this

system maybe they would have disliked it but more palatable I guess then the system that came before which are far more brutal in many ways and this is the point I'm making which is that if you're going to do a comparison don't do a comparison today. At the time the world was an exceptionally violent place in terms of like I said you know the Mongol invasion and sort of like particular forms of violence that Christian states are enacted upon each other, and the Ottomans came and tried to really do it differently and it's for that reason they were successful. Actually, so as I said to you before they tried very hard not to agitate the Christian populations and as a result of that the Christian populations remained right there was no false conversions there was no humiliation or embarrassment what was then was in particular to say all right, look we're going to take this child and we're going to put them into our system yeah. and we're going to make them on our own and so on.

So, let's go back to the original question about declines and now we've built a pattern of you know that your argument is the analysis is but there was no linear decline. So, I suppose my next question, I suspect I've got a partial answer to this, but it's worth asking you the question. So, in the west, Bernard Lewis talks about this and the heights the epoch of the Ottoman Empire was what the 17th century Suleiman the Magnificent, 16th century sorry, Suleiman magnificent, these amazing years, and then from that point onwards you saw decline after decline in Ottoman Sultans and hay leaves were firefighting. Is there a truth or at least a partial truth to that?

If the analysis is simply based on the fact of the expansion of land, yeah, then yes.

We've reached the height of our expansion.

Yeah, at the time of Suleiman, yeah that's right. Okay, and then from that moment that was not possible, right. And so what would be assumed even by Muslims is the siege of Vienna which failed was an indication of that Decline and the reason why that decline took place is because in Suleiman's time himself there is a particular decadence that's taking place and so from that moment we never recovered but when you do an Ottoman history like I give an example post Suleiman the sort of like the creation of Ottoman Turkish so Ottoman Turkish was not a language that was used, that became popularized as a language of intelligence here, what people don't realize is you can't infinitely expand there needs to be moments of consolidation, yeah. And so, you have to consolidate what you've made consolidate religion come to the late troops and so forth and what people don't appreciate is from generation to generation, so imagine this from generation to generation, yeah. How do you maintain that substance, that existence, that is very difficult to do and they were able to achieve that. Now, when we're talking about decline it's in comparison to so the question is in comparison to what exactly, right. So, then what we do is we say Ottoman Empire versus the West and we created Western Europe as a holistic block not seen we ignore the Napoleonic Wars, the wars that they're having amongst themselves, the moments of decline that we have even in in the European context within various states and so forth, right. Instead, we just look at them as a whole because what we did, I guess, to some degree is we made this comparison of civilizational one right, it's a civilizational comparison between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world which is Western Europe particular or the West and then we say well the problem is not with Islam the problem is with these people, yeah. These people failed it right and that is a civilizational sort of like idea that came about in you start to see in the late 19th century and in the early 20th century where a lot of Muslim thinkers started to write about works on Islamic civilization, civilizational discourse imagining it and so forth right, because the West who were colonizing the world were making the argument that they are superior civilization and we couldn't accept that so rather than saying they are superior civilization we had two places to go no our civilization is better than yours or it is better than yours but we just haven't done it properly, right. And so that's what then happened how it became internalized to some degree.

But there is an argument that if we think about the if we I know this is an oversimplification of our history but we've got the, we've got the Ottomans and they've all made claims to the Caliphate, we'll talk about those claims in a second but the Umayyad and the Abbasids were far better integrating minorities into the Caliphate in the sense that the majority of the citizens they ended up conquering ended up becoming Muslims. Now, of course they weren't forced into Islam, but the success of the implementation of Islam was such and if not the current generation, future generation slowly melded into the religious and political domain of the Caliphate and ended up becoming Muslims. So, Syria, Persia were lands where today alhamdulillah we still see the vast majority of the people in those that occupying those lands are Muslims, right. We think about the Ottoman incursions into most of Eastern and Central Europe, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece; these provinces, these domains of the Ottomans remain Christian. How do we, I mean that shows an inability to do what the previous Caliphates were able to do. No? is that not a fair…

So, why do you assume that everyone in the Arab world became Muslim in the Abbasid period, what have I said to you just thought just to be a contrarian and say actually all of those Arabs became Muslim during Ottoman period.

That's out of sync with what I know, but yeah.

Exactly, yeah. So, this is the Fatimid, Fatimids were a Shia entity, yes. And then they became Sunni when… yeah, you're the historian. Under, Salahuddin, okay right. So, it happens a lot later, yeah. Khorasan, Sunni, now is it's today's Iran, pr Shia, when did that happen? Yeah. So, what you're seeing is the once again, it's an ingrained assumption, the assumption is that people are just all converted Islam in the very early periods, yeah. A lot of conversions have happened later on in Islamic history.

But isn't there a difference between Bulgaria…

And Anatolia?

Yeah.

Which is Ottoman, yeah. Exactly.

Explain that.

How did Anatolians all become Muslims, but the Bulgarians don't, yeah. Because the Ottomans had a particular policy that Muslims have always had, just like the Mughals in India, yeah. You know.

Explain the policy.

So, the policy is that they created particular mechanisms, either by taxation by education by, you know, making particular jobs available in the state machinery or whatever it may be yeah. And people would convert to Islam for various reasons, and different groups of people had a different disposition towards becoming Muslim, the Balkans in particular, we have Albanians and Bosnians who become Muslim across the board we have Greek Muslims we do have Bulgarian Muslims and we do have Romanian Muslims, and so forth. But these people in particular and these Muslims in particular have disappeared because of the creation of the nation-state right. Now, what we're saying though is the complexity of the Balkan provinces and anyone who's been to the Balkans would realize the Balkans is like India, it's host of different areas and statelets and so forth with different peoples speaking different languages and they have a different tradition, and multiple traditions. That, you know, the Ottomans didn't have an aggressive policy of trying to force converting people converted by choice and so forth. But in Anatolia where we had a similar dynamic but not as complex you see waves and waves of Turks and Kurds, other Muslims becoming Muslim. So, it's not a failure that I mean I the question is that do we see that as a problem that Muslims are we have to force people to become Muslim right. Actually what it shows is that's not what we do as Muslims we don't force people to become Muslims and in Arabia where Islam has been around the longest, people have converted to Islam over time and that conversion may not have happened comprehensively during the Umayyad period or the Abbasid period, we notice for example the sunilization of parts of Khorasan happen under the Seljuks, the Seljuks had brought Sunny Islam, at least that's the narrative, back to the map in that region at a particular time it's waves of Sunny Islam that's been coming throughout history, and the reason why them people are becoming Muslim and that then form of criticism should be, you know, laid towards the Mughals in India or the various Indian you know.

I've had it been said by Western historians but there was a deliberate policy not to bring them to Islam because the burden of taxation or non-Muslims would have been greater than on Muslims is there any truth to that.

I think it's a very simplistic way of just assuming that Muslims are only interested in money, right. When we're seeing; so in the Ottoman Empire you do see this the burden on Muslims was greater to safeguard the interests of the state, and in many ways the Ottomans would find multiple mechanisms to adhere to the principles of Islam in order not to execute harsh punishment towards Muslims and the Ottomans were then doubly careful to make sure that they were a lot more affable towards non-Muslims as a way of not coming across as Muslims who are persecuting non-Muslims in their empire, and what's important about this is we see this in regards to Britain and India the way that the British treat Muslims and non-Muslims alike in India is a way that the Ottomans have never treated non-Muslims. Now, it is possible that they have been confessional sort of like contestations in the Ottoman domains and I'm also willing to concede that from time to time the Central State who is five six-hundred-year history would have made particular policy areas at any given time in that 600, in those 600 years. But by and large the Ottomans were very careful about the non-Muslim population, because they believe that Islam; their belief is we're not trying to make you Muslim we want you to live under Islam, right. There's a difference you understand yes and that you know this is why the military system was so successful yeah.

Explain the military.

Where you have this confessional sort of like communities right. You can be a Christian or a Jew or Orthodox Christian, a Greek Christian, yeah; Armenian Christian whatever and you would live in your communities. You would be safeguarded to practice whatever you choose to practice within your community yeah. And that you could even practice law in the way that your community does so right, and then if you're not satisfied with that you can then go to the Sharia courts, you'd have two courts you would have two courts, but the choice was yours. But the Ottomans were very careful of intervening into the everyday matters of what's happening in someone's home in regards to whatever religious group they belong to and the Ottomans are very sensitive towards not trying to agitate the various communities and the communities were wide and large. So, we're not you know I'm just mentioning to write the various different types of Christians that exist in the Ottoman Empire we have different types of Muslims from the Shia who were in Iraq and Lebanon we have Sunni Muslims, obviously, and then you have people who belong to other denominations like the Druzies and the Alawis and so forth. They all exist in the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottomans had to find ways of dealing with this complexity of the region in many ways, and make the case that they can live under Islam, and that Islam is not the problem here. We, what we see in regards to Western Europe in particular; so I give an example of Sheikh Rashid Rida, Salafi's reformist, think of him born in Tripoli lives in Egypt and in Almanar press, I reckon September 25th, he writes a tract I still remember it 25th.

What date?

September 1908. He writes that what is so exceptional about France and its revolution; they are one people, one language, one nation. But we the Ottomans and he calls himself Ottoman, yeah. This really Ottomans are many people many languages many religions…

He sees as a problem.

No, he says many ethnicities and then he goes and in he celebrates the fact that our equality is far more complicated than France, than the one that you've achieved. Now, what is he trying to do the French Revolution at the time and even now has become the standard of all modern Revolution that's the imagination that everyone has the French Revolution. I'm assuming it's the revolution of 1848 not the revolution of the 1780s right. And the idea is he's saying so what's so great about your Revolution, we have had a revolution in which we haven't a forced assimilation; we don't have just one group of people that speaking one language and I have one religion. That under Islam you can have this plurality the under Islam you can have equality under the eyes of the law but you can still have your difference and that even as Muslims we are different and that was the point he was pushing home and he wouldn't be the only thinker who fought like that, and that is interesting and I think it's worth celebrating it more so that Muslims have had the ability to allow non-Muslims to live under Islam, in peace in the way that they saw fit. Then to have the argument that we should have force converted everybody right, right.

Okay, that's interesting. So, you… We talked about the different stages, and again maybe this is a little simplistic, and of course there are phases in between but if we were to say that the Umayyads, the Abbasids and you’ve got the Ottomans, right. There is an argument made today, and it's an argument I see consistently being made by Muslims, that the Ottomans really weren't a Caliphate. You know, the true Caliphates were the three prior Caliphates that came between. But after the second of Baghdad and the decline of the Abbasids, you know, as a force. The Ottomans really, were a European Empire and it was only until Sultan Abdul Hamid II that the idea of the Ottomans having laying claim to a Caliphate became real. I mean, how do you understand this whole sort of notion of Caliphate versus the Ottoman Empire

Muslims want to believe that they can believe that. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?

But it is there, you know, going back to Sultan Al-Fatih, is there a you know, an acknowledgment…

What is the claim that they're not okay with it? what is the claim? The claim is what, did they want Arabs? Do they want it from the Quraish? then we might as well give up on that idea today, forget it, it's over. There has to be a particular… In order to say they're not a Caliphate right, you have to then put down the conditions of what is a Khilafah. Okay, you have to make that condition that these are the conditions of a Khilafah, they didn't fit that condition. So, what is the argument that's been put forward is the argument being put forward that Selim came down and wiped out the Mamluks? how's that different from the Abbasid revolution; is the argument being put down that they're not Arabs that is Islam only for the Arabs, and only the Arabs are going to be in positions of authority and power the Hanafis didn't believe so. Or is the fact that the Quraishi Hadith is the reason, well if that's the case the Hanafis once again didn't believe that position, yeah, was a condition. Now, there are Scholars who believe that but how’s the Khilafah based on the ulama's positioning. They’re entitled to believe whatever they want to believe, but in today's day nation in 2024, let's just say, or 23. We have a Khilafah tomorrow you… Where are we going to find the Qureshi. How are we going to chase that lineage? is that feasible? is that acceptable? So, the argument, the argument is not clear for me. What it is that they're trying to make.

Okay maybe, and maybe you can shoot this down as you're shooting down all my all my plights, but you know, Sultan Abdel Hamid II was the first proper Caliph to use the term Caliphate.

That's not true, all right so what's interesting, I give an example what was …al Baghdadi, what's his full name… Of the Isis guy Abdu, Abu Bakr? Our cameraman knows, yeah. Okay so, Abu Bakr Baghdadi. Okay, so it's interesting when he established his so-called Caliphate yes right. What's intriguing is what did he do? He created an imagination of what? the Abbasid Caliphate of it, yes. He dressed in black robes with his expensive watch, and wonderful long black robes in the middle of the Masjid in Raqqa, making this claim and creating an imagination, that you know, a proper Caliphate was the last time we had a proper one was during the Abbasid period, right the Abbasid Revolution. What's intriguing about this imagination, this is imagination, is coming out of a history of Arab nationalism. So, he's probably somebody who came out of the Ba’athish regime either in Syria or Iraq. Had that particular form of nationalist indoctrination, believed in it, brought into it and internalized it. What was intriguing more, and I've said intriguing twice now, is that when he speaks about the Ottomans, he mentions only Sykes and Picot. So, for him, when he thinks about the Ottomans, he thinks Sykes and Picot, yeah. Prior to that everything else is irrelevant to him.

This is the French-British secret agreement to carve out?

Yeah, to carve out the Ottoman Empire. And draw lines, right okay. Now that tell that is telling of something in the sense that to what degree people have become so disconnected that they have such a large blind spot in their imagination.

It's because he didn't read your future book.

He did not read my future book, if only he did maybe he should have listened to our podcast. But the point I'm trying to make then is that there is a particular imagination in the minds of the Muslims right. Who also by the way don't do Umayyad and Abbasid history, who have the assumption that the Abbasid Khilafah was the only real true Khilafah, and after that nothing has been replicated. All right let's look at the case in Selim, when Selim comes down to the Mamluks in 1516 -1517, he takes over, the Arab provinces, there are works in Istanbul that are being written by the ulama not only Turkish ulama by the way, various ulama which are consolidating his claim towards the Khilafah.

So, this was the consolidation of what the remnants of the Abbasid plagues.

Yeah, so you have a nominal, al-Mutawkil Caliph in Baghdad, I mean sorry in Cairo, who's under the authority of the Mamluks, right; and so forth. And so, he takes him out house arrest he's the next Caliph, right. In his work about I'm not sure if some of the ulamas are trying to do this, but at least he shows that there are a lot of political tracks and moral and ethical tracks that have been written by the ulama trying to make the case of what a good caliph ought to be. So, in Ottoman history we noticed this they have an Adab culture which is his idea that there's a particular Adab that should be understood by political authority.

So, an ethic or an etiquette.

So, Adab is interesting, I'm going to have tangent here. So, Adab is not simply good manners right. The understanding of Adab would be that everything has to be in this rightful place okay. Now, the maybe… Okay, so let me go off attention then. So, I'm going to get water water is a ni’ama from Allah ta’ala. Water is something we do wudu or abdest in Turkish. You see, water gives us life, water gave this planet life. Allah ta’ala mentions water about a life giver, he talks about it being sent from the sky and so forth. Zamzam is water and so forth. Now, when you holistically understand all the value that water gives you in terms of Insan, then your relationship with water changes in the way that you interact with it. So in my parents, they wouldn't allow us to throw water you'd bring a cup of water with me holding it like this at the bottom right, you wouldn't they tell the dog to drink it quickly drink it sit in doubt drinks I'm standing up whatever. Adab culture here, now the, it's holistic in the sense that water then is falling into this whole framework of how you should interact with it. So, what is going on here is that the knowledge of that thing is understood holistically right it's not just where's the Qur’an and Sunnah for this. It's internalized in the society to the point that everyone understands it. Qur’an okay, so you I've been raised in an Indo-Paki environment, for us Qur’an could never go underneath the bed could. Qur’an had to go to the top of the Shelf, yes. Qur’an have to be packed in a cloth, could… Qur’an had to go on top of any other book when I was going to the Madrasa we had to hold the Qur’an to our hearts and walk to the Madrasa., because it's Qalam Allah right. So, the Adab culture around this, even though people say this is some may argue that this is bid’a where's the evidence for this. But the Adab culture was… There's a particular decorum that has to go with your interaction with this right, which is very strong in what you see in the Asia subcontinent and in Turkey, today’s Turkey as well, right. In the Ottoman Empire there is a particular culture that not only talks about politics, but it talks about family, it talks about Society, about what it means to be an elevated group of people. and this Adab literature is consistent and even in the 19th century when modernities come in you start to see an increase of these literature because of the fear that would you know whatever's happening in Western Europe is going to corrupt society right. Now, going back to the Caliphate so we see this in Salim's time the creation of a lot of these works, we see this throughout the Ottoman period when they're speaking of the Imam, or the hakam, or the Khalifa they call him the Khalifa, and they have this culture that talks about it. In 1774 when the Ottomans go to war with the Russians over the Crimea and lose it. Küçük Kaynarca, which is the treaty the Russians for the first time accepted the Ottomans are Caliphate this is first time written in in Western documentation right. And from then onwards it's known that they are Caliphate. So, the Ottomans throughout the time as making the claim towards being a Caliphate, have been consistent. In the early Ottoman period in Selim's time it is very possible that in India and other parts of the Muslim World they would have rejected Salim's claim, why, because one minute you have a kaliph in Cairo the next minute is in Istanbul they obviously going to tell us that we reject that we're not accepting who are you we're not giving this to you we never gave you any legitimacy to do that because it changes everything it changes the whole dynamics of the Muslim to some… But within 50, 60, 70, 100 years as generations are going by this became the accepted norm, to the point in India in World War I, we have the Khilafit committee who are doing what? Fighting for the Ottoman Empire right. So, this discursively becomes accepted right. So if you read the works of Muslim thinkers in India like Mawlana Kalana, the Ali Brothers, you know you read the works even …Mohammad Iqbal, they all accept that the Ottomans have been a Khilafah from whenever they've been and even in the Arab world, there are writers accepting, this would not have been possible if it wasn't for the Arab ulama to accept that this is what it is. And with that came great responsibility, but today there's a sense of hubris sometimes we've been very easily dismissive, why? the lives we reject that, or you know they were Turks we reject that or they're ignorant they don't know what they're doing, but these are just like very reductive claims you know, but very little in terms of research. Now for me what I try to tell my students is just embrace your history as a whole, why do you have to go after it so aggressively what is the intention of going after it so aggressively. Because once again it's trying to legitimize something now right what I try to do in terms of teaching my students is this is all your history I want you to understand it then whatever you want to make with it that's up to you, but let's understand it properly and go through it holistically and this is why it's important that we need people to teach other is to in Islamic history in that way but it's still the talks of the Mosques and so forth and it's really aggressive and it's not necessary in my opinion.

Okay, can I ask you a sub question related to that, and that is the: I use and you use the term Ottoman Empire, but last time I interviewed you I got a got some messages from friends of mine and they said well why call the Ottoman Caliphate and Empire, because empires are associated with all that is bad in the world; the British Empire you know, the American Empire is what we call the current sort of Pax Americana. Is that a lazy use of language, or can we make a case about the Ottoman Caliphate while simultaneously an Empire as well.

So, all right.So we have in Europe free schools of thought that come about writing history; we have the Frankfurt School which promotes a very Marxist understanding of right and history and humanities, which becomes very prevalent; we have the another school which comes from France which looks about how great and sent Francis and Center in France in the narrative of modernity, and then you had the Cambridge School that came from England in which they tried to promote the idea of empire, right. And how look at not all empires are bad you know all of them and their main attempt was to try to British Empire salvage the sort of like, what would you say the image of the British Empire to some degree. And it was intriguing, is it's in during those moments you have the establishment or the idea of Queen and Country and so forth. Trying to weigh because you're getting this residual decline of the Commonwealth and whatnot right. Now, in English that word empire has stuck, because in many ways there isn't a different way of trying to categorize in the English medium a particular land mass where dynasties is in power or in charge. Now some historians have making the argument that not all empires are the same right so they make the claim there's a disclaimer they'll say look when we're talking about empire actually a lot of Muslims they have this hang up of the Imperial Empire of the British or the French, yeah. What they're saying is they look no Empires are the same and we are qualifying this, and we simply mean an empire which is a dynasty that's in power and it's been in power for prolonged period of time like the Roman Empire and so forth right. More recently people have taken exception to the idea that it's an Empire because they still have that idea that empire means what the British were and we don't want to associate ourselves with that. That comes with the need to then qualify it, whether you're going to choose to use a language of it in Ottoman studies the word Ottoman Empire has just become a given right to the point it just becomes very difficult to try to deconstruct in that way. Now, if Muslims are going to say is then they need to explain what the Khilafah is right this is where now if we're going to use our own terminology and I I'm in full support of that but then you have to explain what is a Khilafah is a Khilafah a system or is a Khilafah a, is it like democracy where you can have multiple Khilafahs or so forth and like I have my own opinions on this but what I'm saying is that if Muslims are going to use alternative language the alternative language has to be far more crystal and clearer than the claim they make towards the ambiguity of the language they do not like, and that's understandable. For example, in our islamicate languages we probably wouldn't use the word Empire and that's where part of the problem is. So, then how do you how would you say that in English especially when we're interacting in English so often. So, this is why like people like Subramanyam and so forth, when they make the case that it's better to make the argument that not all empires are the same. Then… and in that way you can at least then speak about the Mughals, speak about the Ottomans, speak about the Safavid, speak about the Umayyads, or made actually, you know. They say the Abbasid Empire or the Umayyad. So, they will say in that way, so…

Okay, it's a contested idea right, and you know to take the broad understanding of the empire that it's not always evil is probably a way forward for now at least.

It's becoming more and more popularized as well the word empire and we're not talking about the Empire the British sense yeah but the term Empire there is an attempt to reclaim it in comparison to the nation state right that's also happening okay, right. So now, when people have become critics of the nation state, then if you're going to use a …If you're going to speak of an alternative model of the nation to, in relation to the nation state, what would you speak of? Yeah, and then people would use the word empire but then there's an imagination that the Empire is what the British were doing. So, then you have like so for today's arguments people will say America is an Empire and what does that mean exactly right and some people are making the argument actually America is at the top of the food chain in regards to global politics because it's an empire, right. Because it's not a traditional nation state, and then when we're looking at the Cold war between the USSR and the Russian these were a contestation between two empires. So, here you start to see that there is still a fluidity in the way that the word empire is used. So, for me, Muslims can use it how they see fit but I think what will be needed in English anyway is a disclaimer or a footnote, because it's just become so popular that to not use it becomes complicated for the readers who are reading about Ottoman history.

When we talk about Islamic history, when non-Muslims talk about Islamic history they talk about the Golden Age of Islam, not golden age it's all obviously always associated with the Abbasids, Baghdad, with the height of intellectual thinking of poetry, of ulama, of science, of technology. And it's often the case the Ottomans are seen to be the antithesis of that, right. The Ottomans were soldiers, they want, they have to find the art to have great mosques and architects but you don't get the feeling that at least from and again you know certainly he will contestants but you don't get the impression but the other that the Ottomans produce great poets great ulama you know Islamic scholarship doesn't seem to when we talk Ibn Tayymiya or Gazhali, or you know whoever in Islamic history, we tend to talk about Scholars that came before the sack of Baghdad. Is there a truth in the argument that the Ottomans were not multi-dimensional when did not reach the height of what today we would call civilizational standards.

I think that's unfair, yeah. So even like the idea of the golden period it's related to decline, right. So, you have to have a golden period and then there is a decline right that comes after the golden period. And even in Ottoman history there are moments of the golden period we mentioned it today, Suleiman the magnificent, so he said that is a golden period in the minds of at least Lewis if Muslims don't accept that and that's a golden moment from that moment onwards so basically the moments the Ottomans became, they just tanked right. But the idea of golden period is often used by people as a way of creating comparison to create a particular standard. So, I'll give you an example what I mean by that so we will always use the past as a way of judging ourselves and we will also use the future as a way of judging ourselves. So, we want to go forward we want to be progressive we want to improve so then we will say that the past is decadent, or we will say you know what look at the state of us look what's happened to us the past was so great right. And this shifting of the timeline of our imagination regarding the past continuously happen so we continuously create particular golden moments as a way of how we see ourselves in the now once again right. Now in the case of the Abbasids in particular and actually Muslims did wonderful things in Andalusia, and in other parts of the world including you know the Russian areas or India and so forth. So, this is not just a an argument laid towards the Ottoman Empire this is an argument lead towards a Muslim world as a whole that after the so-called golden age of the Abbasids which lasted how long… you know maybe a couple of decades that that's it ever since then we haven't been able to do anything which this doesn't hold water. So, in the Ottoman period we have the Tulip age and so forth we have continued works of poetry in the Ottoman Empire and the Ottomans were not putting guns to the Arabs heads and saying listen you can't do good work so in that sense people need to understand how the empire was for a very long time it was a decentralized Empire in which people were interconnected, but had levels of semi-autonomy or autonomy in fact intellectually even where they could do whatever they see fit and so what we saw in different parts of the Ottoman domains is different forms of intellectual culture and so forth. Where that changes interestingly enough is in the 19th century, with the printed press what the tools of modernity create is a synchronization if that if we're going to make an argument for modernity the idea of modernity is to synchronize create everything streamlined one language, one newspaper, one identity and so forth. And when we start to do those sort of things then we start to see the past in that way we want to assume that everything was just one place and so on right but that wouldn't have been feasible the Ottomans wouldn't have had that level of control over the rest of its domains to stop people from producing, and you know the West wasn't in a particular space where it could have intervened in the Muslim world to stop it from producing so Muslims were producing it's just that my argument once again is that we have become disconnected from all that literature of production because how is it and I say this again and I use this word in the past collective amnesia we have a 600 year blinds, it's a 600 year blind spot because you only understanding we have of Ottoman history unfortunately on many occasions are the questions you've asked it's not actually. If I went to all those people that you surveyed regarding these questions and I'll be honest with you this is concerned quite flippant on me but I've had these questions so often that I could have sent you those questions yeah because on all the podcasts I've been on the questions have come in the same vein which shows you a particular stagnation which is that we are borrowing these questions from each other but then when I say to all of these students and people ask me these questions and did you study Ottoman history and they go no I said well where did you get this from where did you get this question from I read it somewhere, where? You know I was on Wikipedia, or I watched the debate where they said such and such, or you know I read an Ottoman history book which one I was reading Bernard Lewis or Carolyn Finkel I said yeah but these works I've been contested and challenged by historians all the time. So, when you look at the works of Caroline Finkel's Osman's dream or Bernard Lewis's book what you see is that people will say I picked up this and I read it, but that's different than studying Ottoman history, right. And once again, I'm making this outlandish claim, my students not only my students, but students who study Ottoman history don't ask those same questions because once they read in all the literature once they have any debates with me and each other and so forth they start to say hang on a minute okay wait, this question sounds a bit strange now me asking it.

What are the questions that we should be asking, give me a list of questions I should really be asking.

I don't want you to ask me a list of questions, what I want you to do is study Ottoman history, okay. You know, this is what I want, but what I want is to for Muslims to study history, and I'm not saying that history is not taught in the seminaries and I'm not saying that people who are some trained in the seminaries don't have the skills. I've had, I've met people. So here, I have a very strange profile in the city. Random Muslims from around the world will send me an email, find it on the internet, say can we meet up for coffee I'll say sure we'll sit down, and they'll say you know I studied this…

We meet up for coffee and then I asked you is that Haram or Halal…

Yeah, you know it was this bad, you know but then they'll say your stuff like I studied dars in Islam and am I qualified to do history, yes of course you are. You've got all the tools that you need to study history you know and what you see is in the seminaries they are given all the tools to study history, but there is a belief that they can't do history unless if it's done in academia there is that belief that needs to change a little bit we need to find alternative ways of teaching history to Muslims that don't only are not only restricted in the academic space because it's an ivory tower, it feels like an ivory tower, and we feel very they feel very detached from people like myself I accept that yeah. But what I would like to see is that we do find a more wholesome way of teaching history where we're teaching it all the time right, and the reason why I say that is because it's to make them feel like they exist, that they are attached to a body. In Islam we don't teach time in a linear fashion yeah right. So, I went to a Janaza today, and people kept saying inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajium, right. They'll keep on saying it over and over, and we will all internalized in this, why, because from Allah ta’ala we came and to Him we return. When I talk to my students, I say to them when you're thinking of a timeline think of Akhira, you’re Akhira oriented, not just this Dunya. When you’re reading the book that's all you think of. What you realize is the Akhira came before you, and it came after you, so your time is not flat it's not straight. The Qur’an, which has an opening, but doesn't have a beginning. It's a book which skews your notion of time and what the Muslims should be thinking of when they see themselves in the timeline of humanity is that there is something bigger than us in regards to how we exist, how we make sense of ourselves. And so, for me there was a book written by John fee, he talks about how can we do history or something along those lines. He was a Christian and the argument that he was making is that can we do history that is helpful for Christians, so that they can place themselves in the world we live in. I'll make a similar argument, can we do history in a way that can make sense to Muslims, so that they can place themselves in the world they live today, so that they can understand their past, they can understand their present, and they can understand their future, which is not simply restricted to this Dunya. And I think that's necessary right, and this is why I want people to learn, and I want to teach, because I think that's the best way. And people will often say, and I get it, they say can you give me a bite-sized pamphlet it's… Printed press, can you just not give me a small book that I can read, but that's not how I want you to do it because what I'm trying to do is not give you answers to your questions, what I'm trying to do is change the way you think.

Okay, can I ask you one last question about…

This is the last one…

This is the last question. I actually, you know, it's a question about, we've established that there is not a linear, you know decline of the Ottomans, and the last time we spoke you raise a really interesting theory about the car crash period, and if it wasn't for the first World War, the Ottomans could have been around today, right. Do you believe that the Caliphate, which fell what 100 years… Just we're coming up to 100 years of the absence of a known Caliphate, right. Do you believe a Caliphate would have been around if the Ottomans hadn't made the decision to join the losing side in the first World War.

The Caliphate would have still been around even when they lost the war, really. If you see the Treaty of Sevres on in particular and then you see as a consequence what happened and the Ottomans, they still want their Khilafah to exist I mean this is why even in the Turkish Republic you have this moment of abolishing the Sultanate and then the Khilafah. There are debates even within the Turkish Republic about whether this is the right move or not to do and then you see in the Muslim World, Alisa amongst Muslims that are thinkers from India and the Arab world still thinking that we can revive something. So, clearly the idea was never to abolish it in the Muslim Consciousness yeah. Which meant that even if the Ottoman Empire had lost the war, they would have been particular concessions and they would have had to accept the fact that their boundaries would not have been the same as they had been 100 years prior. But what was intriguing is some of the treaties that they were signing like with Egypt and so forth, which was still an acceptance that the Ottomans were at the top of the food chain that you have your form of autonomy, but we still exist as a Khilafah. Similar in the way that the United States is now, the United States is a little different because it's quite powerful, but in the sense that the United States doesn't govern Europe okay; it governs its states and even its states are they have their own sort of legal mechanisms, but it governs what it does is it it's influence on Europe and it's a leader for the Western world, and it sort of like leads the Western world and the Western world looks up towards it. As a result of that you can say that the United States of America somehow is pulling Europe along with it, or the West shall we say along with it, to wherever projects it wants to execute. What the Ottomans were hoping, probably. This is just probably my argument I can't substantiate this is that they would have still existed and the rest of the Muslim World intellectually would have still felt a sense of allegiance to the Ottoman Empire, and they'll still have led the Muslim world to some degree. Now other people would have made the argument that did they need to exist. As a historian I would make the argument similar to the state of Israel the fact that the state of Israel exists gives a particular form of legitimately to Jews around the world even if they don't live in the state of Israel that's the existence of that state provides them that agency, even when they live in other parts of the world right. And so, if the Ottomans had existed they probably would have provided a particular form of agency to Muslims, even if they didn't live in the Ottoman Empire just for the fact that they existed in that format. Now what that format might have been is interesting because when the first new nation-states were formed it was new for the Muslim world, and it was on very shaky grounds, and who knows how that would have configurated in many ways. So, I personally think that it could have survived in a different form, and that it would have still been dealing with the complexities of the world that it’s in. What the Ottoman Empire would have done in World War II would have been interesting, I would have assumed that they would have stayed neutral in the way that the Turkish Republic did, but the Turkish Republic had the sense of hindsight because of what the Ottomans did, and the Ottomans didn't have a precedent of something like World War I before that for, and this is probably one of the questions is like why did they get involved in WWI, don't think they had much of a choice. Actually, I mean it's very easy to say now they could have remained neutral but the way that the Western Powers were going after each other. The Ottomans were caught in in a particular space, and they tried to… The idea was, is that when you create alliances when you're with a strong Alliance like the British then the chances of you being attacked are very unlikely, because it creates a particular momentum; nobody would have guessed the risk strategy that the Germans would have taken to create World War. I mean that's unprecedented, so that wouldn't have been part of the imagination so they're going to risk this you know it's like England playing Cricket they're just going for. You would never have thought of that, that are they really gonna be that Kamikaze. Because there's a lot at stake, the world is at stake and I think the Ottomans would have thought that okay we've aligned ourselves to the Germans but this is going to be a quick War the Russians that you never would have thought that this is going to be a humongous War that's just going to grind everyone down, and then you know you have World War II and the Europeans may have because they had Wars amongst themselves right. Napoleonic wars were a little bit different, but so hindsight's a wonderful thing now we can all look back and say so forth. But it would never have been part of that thought process, yeah. They never they experienced Libya, the Balkan was, very short wars one or two years and so forth but this was unprecedented.

How long have you been living in Istanbul?

I think 10 years…

10 years has been a decade.

Yeah.

I suppose the most important question is don't you miss Chicken Cottage 210?

210 Chicken Cottage, sometimes. I mean I do ask you to bring me cheese.

Yeah, that's true.

So, you know what it is, people sometimes ask me like you know when I watched your Podcast with Thomas recently, you know, they're asking me do you miss London. I said you know I used to say home is where my mother is you know, and my mother still lives in London right. So, in that sense, but I also made a choice just like my parents did when they moved to England, and I made a choice to move to the Muslim world and I didn't move to the Muslim world, because I was running away from the UK. I had a decent life in the UK, I enjoyed my friends and family and so forth. But I wanted to make a difference and I made the choice at the time 10 years ago, but I thought about this prior to that. Then, if I could give my agency in this part of the world there may be this part of the world could do something interesting after I die, and that I want to be part of that process because I was tired of being a minority in Europe, and I thought if I was part of a majority maybe I can do something different. Now there are different challenges here there are still forms of authorization that take place and so forth. But these are still my people and this is still my Ummah, you know. So, I remember one time I was asked by somebody like don't you feel ashamed that you left the Muslim Community in London behind to come to Turkey? I said I never asked my mother that question when she left Pakistan behind. You know, the Ummah is the Ummah, wherever I'm at I try to teach, and I love the fact that I have students here in Istanbul is an interesting Hub, where Muslims from around the world who don't have the luxury of being able to go to the US or Europe anymore are coming here to learn

and study, and I have the opportunity to teach them and you know there are some beautiful people that I've met because of that and alhamdulillah that's something from Allah Ta’ala. You know and like here for example, I had there are two publishing houses here, they're doing wonderful work one is which is Dergi Ismail Karoja's publication which are translating everything from the late Ottoman Empire into Turkish, and then the second one is Ketebe, which are looking for Scholars and thinkers and writers Muslims right. Who will publish works for them and they're willing to be able to, you know, support that work around the world. And in that sense Istanbul is an interesting Hub and it's from Istanbul that I started teaching online you know. Because then people from around the world started asking me like you know your classes online wouldn't you be interested. And Istanbul's given me all of that now if I was in England; one I probably would never have taught Ottoman history. I would have taken up another day job, but this is the center of Ottoman history, I love Ottoman history, I love Islamic history I don't only teach Ottoman history and this city has given me the opportunity to do something that I love and I like to believe that Insha’Allah Allah ta’ala rewards me for what I do, and imagine you feel a sense of reward for the job that you do, you know what I mean? And I get paid for it so can't complain.

Thank you, Dr Yakoob. JazzakAllah khayr.

BarakAllah fik, thank you.