The proper order of things : language, power, and law in Ottoman administrative discourses / Heather L. Ferguson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ferguson, Heather L., author.

Contributor:

Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Administrative law.

History.

Discourse analysis--Political aspects.

Discourse analysis.

Turkey--History--Ottoman Empire, 1288-1918.

Turkey.

Turkey--Politics and government.

Politics and government.

Discourse analysis--Political aspects--Turkey--History.

Order--Political aspects--Turkey--History.

Order.

Administrative law--Turkey--History.

Imperialism.

Physical Description:

xii, 426 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2018]

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. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : the structure of empire and a grammar of rule

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

The brokered state : "the past is no longer the present" in the "land between the rivers"

A state of rebellion : the re-territorialization of Ottoman sovereignty in greater Syria

On the perfect state : an Ottoman vision of order

Conclusion : the archiving state.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Ferguson, Heather L. Proper order of things.

ISBN:

9781503603561

1503603563

OCLC:

999475136