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What Finkel calls the old narrative of the Ottoman Empire is simple to relate: it rose, declined, and fell. An exotic parade of salacious sultans, grand viziers and duplicitous eunuchs inhabit the sultry harems and domed palaces of Istanbul--at least in our imaginations. Finkel, a long-time resident of Turkey and Ottoman scholar, relates a new narrative of empire that properly accounts for the richness and complexity of the Ottoman state over nearly seven centuries. By presiding over their multiethnic empire for so long, and ushering it from medievalism to modernity, the Ottomans should be ranked alongside the Hapsburgs and the Romanovs, she argues. That they are overlooked is the fault of Western historians who have peered at their subjects through the lens of their own prejudices. - Source: Library Thing
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