By Miri Shefer-Mossensohn
Scholars have lengthy inspiration that, following the Muslim Golden Age of the medieval period, the Ottoman Empire grew culturally and technologically remoted, getting bored in innovation and putting the empire on a course towards stagnation and decline. Science one of the Ottomans demanding situations this largely authorized Western photo of the 19th- and early twentieth-century Ottomans as backward and impoverished.
In the 1st booklet in this subject in English in over sixty years, Miri Shefer-Mossensohn contends that Ottoman society and tradition created a fertile setting that fostered assorted medical job. She demonstrates that the Ottomans excelled in adapting the innovations of others to their very own wishes and enhancing them. for instance, in 1877, the Ottoman Empire boasted the seventh-longest electrical telegraph process on the planet; certainly, the Ottomans have been one of the era’s such a lot complicated international locations with reference to fashionable verbal exchange infrastructure. to verify her claims approximately technology within the empire, Shefer-Mossensohn experiences styles of studying; country involvement in technological actions; and Turkish- and Arabic-speaking Ottomans who produced, ate up, and changed medical practices. the consequences display Ottoman participation in technological know-how to were a dynamic strength that helped maintain the six-hundred-year empire.
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Extra info for Science among the Ottomans: The Cultural Creation and Exchange of Knowledge
The establishment of muwaqqit (timekeeper) was once additionally inaugurated during this interval. Now there has been a well-organized workforce of pros who mounted the spiritual time in sophistication and precision. They have been hired at varied mosques and faculties, and therefore got here lower than the protecting wing of non secular consumers and the waqf (endowment/trust) associations. It begun within the moment half thirteenth-century Cairo and from there unfold in different places within the Mamluk sultanate. in a while, the establishment accelerated into the Ottoman Empire and persevered there till the 19th century. these appointed as muwaqqit have been honorably supported and held the put up in convenience, in order that they didn't inevitably need to make a residing from different branches in their craft. ninety four Astronomy and astrology have been definitely well known between Ottoman Muslims, as confirmed via the big variety of texts and tools for commentary and calculation that experience survived to our time. certainly, the bibliographical dictionary of Katip Çelebi comprises numerous entries that target subfields of astronomy/astrology. those integrated, for instance, the technological know-how of utilizing the astrolabe and the technological know-how of looking at the heavenly our bodies by way of tools, between different practices. ninety five As astronomy and astrology have been common, they have been additionally a lot debated between students and bureaucrats. well known as they have been, from the palaces of the elites to the local mosques and bazaars, the strain surrounding those themes and the pros who engaged with them, together with the efforts to suppress them, is clear from the medieval interval and endured the entire extra forcefully throughout the Ottoman interval. There existed no authoritative texts on astronomy and astrology, and specific references couldn't have existed within the scriptures, traditions, or formative criminal discussions. The pro-astronomy/astrology faction ex47 science one of the ot tomans ploited this truth to its virtue: if no prohibiting culture at the topic existed, then humans have been authorised it. Formal permission used to be something; social reputation and consensual criminal approval have been one other. the shortcoming of a transparent assertion opposed to astronomy and/or astrology couldn't hinder mistrust from different, simply as robust factions. this can be a varied state of affairs from what Daniel Stolz has famous concerning later Ottoman Egypt, the place he notes the lifestyles of 3 certain cultures of astronomy: the Islamic astronomy of ʿulamāʾ, the country astronomy of viceregal servants, and astronomy within the newly proven Arab press. the truth for real people—in their schooling, careers, and methods of figuring out astronomy—was that those cultures often mixed. but those astronomical cultures emerged particularly websites and traditions. ninety six within the early glossy Ottoman global, even within the related highbrow and social milieu and area, there have been opposing sentiments concerning stargazing. once more, a mid-seventeenth-century instance emerges from the biographical dictionary of Katip Çelebi, who summarizes the claims of rivals to astrology.