Osmanl¿ History and Institutions

Mehmet Maksudölu was born in Eski¿ehir in 1939. He graduated from Ankara University Faculty of Theology and taught Arabic, Persian, English and Hadith as a Vocational Teacher at Izmir Imam Hatip High School completing his doctorate in 1966 (Ankara University), and teaching Turkish at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge (1967-70), U.K. He taught Islamic History and Arabic at ¿lâhiyât Fakültesi, Marmara University, ¿stanbul for more than twenty years. As Head of Department of History and Civilization at the International Islamic University, Malaysia he taught Osmanl¿ History (1991-95) and Arabic and Turkish History at the International Turk-Qazak University, Qazakistan (2003-2004). Professor Maksudölu acted as founder Dean of ¿lâhiyat Fakültesi, Eski¿ehir Osmangazi University in 1996, retiring in 2006.As an author he has written works on Osmanl¿ History and on Arabic, and contributed to scholarly journals and reference books.

Western literature about the Osmanl¿ Devlet, however scholarly it may seem, comprises a great deal of misleading material: " ... for too long the Ottomans have been studied without use of any of their sources, resulting in serious distortion and error. No history of France would be considered methodologically sound and balanced if it were written on the basis of English and Italian observations." (Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Cambridge University Press, 1992, II, x.) While addressing this major methodological failing, this book is based on Osmanl¿ sources and represents an entirely new approach.