On the Ottoman 'Wild West'

I was really excited to read this book, and I was largely impressed by the scholarship, but Antov needs to hire a better editor. While it is readable without errors, the writing style is far too jam-packed. Rather than using a variety of simple, compound, and complex sentences, every single sentence is ludicrously complex, impeding comprehension.

That aside, Antov’s research here is really interesting, and I’ve never before seen this material covered in Anglophone historiography. When you look at maps of the Ottoman Empire at different points, it is striking that the Ottomans acquired much of the Balkans before taking Constantinople. By offering a case study of northeastern Bulgaria (centered around Gerlovo and Deliorman), Antov analyzes the ways in which the region was Islamicized and brought into the Ottoman system.

He argues that Gerlovo and Deliorman were quite depopulated areas in the early and mid fifteenth centuries. While there were more people there in the centuries prior, they reached a low population point in the late Middle Ages. However, in the late fifteenth century, increasing numbers of Muslims began to move into region and establish their lives there. What is most interesting about these new populations is that, in comparison to the House of Osman, they were heterodox. Many of them were nomads or semi-nomads, but they had different views of Islam than the authorities in Adrianopole (and then Constantinople). Many of them were originally from Thrace, although their ancestors came from Anatolia a century prior. Others were recent immigrants from Anatolia who were Shi‘a and moved into the region out of persecution by Ottoman authorities. After arriving, they began to convert non-Muslim peoples and, really, began to establish a sort of Islam distinct from Anatolia or elsewhere in the Middle East (perhaps, a type of indigenous Balkan Islam).

But. Ottoman authorities, in the same time period, began a dramatic reorganization of their empire, essentially turning it from a frontier principality into a bureaucratic empire. In doing so, they established a number of provincial cities in the region in order to exert greater control over the northeast Balkans. The most important to this study is Hezargrad, which was founded by Ibrahim Pasha, who established a waqf that then produced some of the most common characteristics of Islamic cities: a mosque, a madrasa, a soup kitchen, perhaps hammams (?). Hezargrad was an important point of Ottoman governance. Another important provincial city was Shmunu, which was originally taken by the Ottoman in the late 14th century but was crushed by Christian crusaders in the middle of the fifteenth century; the Ottomans rebuilt it and used it to exert control. Finally, Eski Cuma became an important town in the early seventeenth century.

On top of their urban development, Ottoman authorities used taxation policies in order to turn the nomadic and semi-nomadic Turcomen (who arrived in the late fifteenth century) into sedentary people. By settling down, Turcomen were granted “special taxation statuses” by Ottoman authorities. As soon as the bulk of Turcomen became cultivators of the land, the Sublime Porte rescinded their tax status. Given that they already had become agriculturalists, the Turcomen did not suddenly become nomads once more.

Antov’s book really adds to the literature on two different levels: First, this is a local history of the transformation of northeastern Bulgaria in the late Middle Ages. Second, this is a study of the development and consolidation of the Ottoman Empire. Antov’s book succeeds well on both of these levels.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the book is the way in which Antov makes his case using particularly limited sources. Most of his materials are Ottoman tax registers, although he does also look at legal codes, chronicles of military campaigns, and fatwas. I knew that tax registers are a particularly important source for pre-20th century Eastern European history—especially in former Ottoman lands—but I did not realize how much they could offer.

This book would have been a five-star book if not for the writing style. I hope that the author can brush up his prose for future works, because I’m really excited to see what other research he produces.