Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities, and Political Changes

Ottoman Borderlands , consisting of a number of articles by prominent scholars, aims to begin to fill a large gap in Ottoman studies, namely the study of the borderlands and their socially, ethnically, and religiously heterogeneous population. In both the frontier provinces and the semiautonomous borderlands, the central government used force, economic incentives, and the granting of titles to establish control over local rulers and, when possible, to integrate them into the system. However, despite the pressing power of the central government, the borderlands remained cultural-social units with their own identities and their own internal dynamics. While the core provinces were more Ottoman, Islamic, and Turkish-speaking, the borderlands were culturally, religiously, and linguistically more heterogeneous, as well as more politically autonomous. Originally published by the International Journal of Turkish Studies