Research Catalog
The proper order of things : language, power, and law in Ottoman administrative discourses
- Title
- The proper order of things : language, power, and law in Ottoman administrative discourses / Heather L. Ferguson.
- Author
- Ferguson, Heather L.
- Publication
- Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2018]
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JFE 18-6695 | Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315 |
Details
- Description
- xii, 426 pages : 1 illustration, 1 map; 24 cm
- Summary
- The "natural order of the state" was an early modern mania for the Ottoman Empire. In a time of profound and pervasive imperial transformation, the ideals of stability, proper order, and social harmony were integral to the legitimization of Ottoman power. And as Ottoman territory grew, so too did its network of written texts: a web of sultanic edicts, aimed at defining and supplementing imperial authority in the empire's disparate provinces. With this book, Heather L. Ferguson studies how this textual empire created a unique vision of Ottoman legal and social order, and how the Ottoman ruling elite, via sword and pen, articulated a claim to universal sovereignty that subverted internal challengers and external rivals. The Proper Order of Things offers the story of an empire, at once familiar and strange, told through the shifting written vocabularies of power deployed by the Ottomans in their quest to thrive within a competitive early modern environment. Ferguson transcends the question of what these documents said, revealing instead how their formulation of the "proper order of things" configured the state itself. Through this textual authority, she argues, Ottoman writers ensured the durability of their empire, creating the principles of organization on which Ottoman statecraft and authority came to rest. --
- Subject
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-414) and index.
- Contents
- Introduction : the structure of empire and a grammar of rule -- Part I. Establishing genres. The sovereign state : spatial and textual politics in early modern Eurasian courts -- The state of stability : the Kanunname as a genre of administrative governance -- The bureaucratic state : reforming documentary practices -- Part II. Performing practices. The brokered state : "the past is no longer the present" in the "land between the rivers" -- A state of rebellion : the reterritorialization of Ottoman sovereignty in greater Syria -- Part III. Objectifying generic politics and practices. On the perfect state : an Ottoman vision of order -- Conclusion : the archiving state.
- Call Number
- JFE 18-6695
- ISBN
- 9781503603561
- 1503603563
- LCCN
- 2017050465
- OCLC
- 999475136
- Author
- Ferguson, Heather L., author.
- Title
- The proper order of things : language, power, and law in Ottoman administrative discourses / Heather L. Ferguson.
- Publisher
- Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2018]
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-414) and index.
- Other Form:
- Online version: Ferguson, Heather L. Proper order of things. Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2018 9781503605534 (DLC) 2017053018
- Research Call Number
- JFE 18-6695