| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Middle East and Northern Africa

Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters. The Ottoman City between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul. (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 1999. Pp. xvi, 244. $59.95.

Presented as a "synthetic work" (p. xiii) on Ottoman cities that questions the "long-standing paradigm of the Islamic city" (p. 7), this book surveys Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul with the goal of revealing their uniqueness while opening up the possibility of considering them as types. Authors Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters argue that they chose an Arab Ottoman city, an Anatolian Ottoman city, and the anomalous Ottoman capital because their major differences allowed for a broad comparative frame. Perhaps more significantly, the three case studies functioned as transcultural "middle grounds" between East and West (p. 14), sites of intense dialogue and cultural fusion due to their sizeable enclaves of foreign populations. The chronological focus is on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, deemed the period of "mature stability" (p. 15). 1

In his essay on Aleppo, Masters outlines the dynamism of the city's economic life from its thriving role in the international silk trade in the seventeenth century through its fluctuations in the following centuries all the way to the French occupation in 1920. He paints a colorful portrait of resident merchant communities that included Europeans, Indians, and Iranian Armenians. Unlike the case in Izmir and Istanbul, the European population of Aleppo did not have its own quarter but resided in the caravansaries of the city's bustling commercial center. . . .

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