Non-Muslim Contributions to Islamic Civilisation – serie

At the turn of the 17th century, the historical Armenian population centres in Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus were ravaged by war with Persia, rebellion, famine and economic collapse. This instability caused mass migrations towards secure territories in Western Anatolia, Istanbul and Thrace, migrations which catalysed a renaissance of Armenian literary and cultural life in the Ottoman capital.This book traces the emergence, experiences and cultural and literary production of Armenian communities in and around Istanbul and the western provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period. Using both Ottoman Turkish and little-known Armenian sources, Henry Shapiro provides a systematic study of the Armenian population movements that resulted in the cosmopolitan remaking of Istanbul and the birth of the Western Armenian diaspora.

Explores how mass migration and a refugee crisis transformed Armenian culture in the 17th-century Ottoman EmpireProvides the first English book on Armenian cultural history in the early modern Ottoman EmpireUtilises original research on Armenian manuscripts and Ottoman Turkish archivesResonates with contemporary concerns about climate change, migration and refugeesIncludes 20 black and white photographs of Armenian ruins, documents and historical sitesThe Rise of the Western Armenian Diaspora in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire traces how Armenian migrants changed the demographic and cultural landscape of Istanbul and Western Anatolia in the course of the 17th century. During the centuries that followed, Ottoman Armenian merchants, financiers (sarraf), authors, musicians, translators, printers and bureaucrats would play key roles in Ottoman trade, art and even governance that is, in most spheres of the empire's economic and cultural life. This book shows how that cosmopolitan world came into being.Using both Ottoman Turkish and little-known Armenian sources, Henry Shapiro provides the first systematic study of Armenian population movements that resulted in the cosmopolitan remaking of Istanbul. Part I documents the Great Armenian Flight, showing how the global crisis of the 17th century (war, climate change, famine) impacted the historical Armenian population centres of the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia and led to mass migrations and resettlement in Western Anatolia, Istanbul and Thrace. In Part II, Shapiro links this history of migration and the refugee crisis with the development of intellectual and cultural life in Istanbul and Western Anatolia: the rise of the Western Armenian Diaspora.

This book collects and analyses the available biographical data on 600 Jewish medical practitioners in the Muslim world in the 9–16th centuries. The biographies are based mainly on information gathered from the wealth of primary sources found in the Cairo Geniza (letters, commercial documents, court orders, lists of donors) and Muslim Arabic sources (biographical dictionaries, historical and geographical literature). The practitioners come from various socio-economic strata and lived in urban as well as rural locations in Muslim countries. Both the biographies and the accompanying discussion shed light on various views and aspects of the medicine practised in this period by Muslim, Jews and Christians, as well as issues such as professional, daily and personal lives; successes and failures; families; Jewish communities; and inter-religious affairs.