Rifa'at 'Ali Abou-El-Haj, professor at Binghamton University, New York, is author of The Rebellion of 1703 and the Structure of Ottoman Politics.

Abou-el-Haj's study will stimulate general readers to rethink the Ottoman experience, to reexamine its main lines of development, to ponder the lessons of the Ottoman legacy for both the Middle East and southeast Europe. Specialists will want to reexamine their own assumptions.... Perhaps the greatest contribution to this study is to challenge readers to think of the Ottoman experience as 'normal, as subject to the same pressures and tensions which have faced people in other times and places." — Digest of Middle East Studies

Rifa'at 'Ali Abou-El-Haj, professor at Binghamton University, New York, is author of The Rebellion of 1703 and the Structure of Ottoman Politics.

Abou-el-Haj's study will stimulate general readers to rethink the Ottoman experience, to reexamine its main lines of development, to ponder the lessons of the Ottoman legacy for both the Middle East and southeast Europe. Specialists will want to reexamine their own assumptions.... Perhaps the greatest contribution to this study is to challenge readers to think of the Ottoman experience as 'normal, as subject to the same pressures and tensions which have faced people in other times and places." — Digest of Middle East Studies

Rifa'at 'Ali Abou-El-Haj, professor at Binghamton University, New York, is author of The Rebellion of 1703 and the Structure of Ottoman Politics.

Abou-el-Haj's study will stimulate general readers to rethink the Ottoman experience, to reexamine its main lines of development, to ponder the lessons of the Ottoman legacy for both the Middle East and southeast Europe. Specialists will want to reexamine their own assumptions.... Perhaps the greatest contribution to this study is to challenge readers to think of the Ottoman experience as 'normal, as subject to the same pressures and tensions which have faced people in other times and places." — Digest of Middle East Studies