Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Minuti, Rolando

Titel

Useful enemies. Islam and the Ottoman Empire in western political thought, 1450–1750. By Noel Malcolm. Pp. xiv + 487. Oxford–New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. £25. 978 0 19 883013 9

Ist Teil von

• The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2020, Vol.71 (4), p.847-849

Ort / Verlag

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 978 0 19 883013 9 The conquest of Constantinople by the army of Mehmed ii (1453), which opened a new scenario in European political and cultural history, and the publication of Montesquieu's Esprit des lois (1748), which marked an essential moment in the history of modern political thought, are the two events that form the framework for three centuries of considerations, investigations and debates concerning Islam and the Ottoman Empire. [...]many examples that produced ‘a picture of Ottoman government and society as a well-ordered and stable system, in which significant aspects of civil life were better arranged than their equivalents in Western Christendom’ (p. 137) can be given. [...]the development of philosophical and religious thought in the seventeenth century highlights various uses of the Ottoman example. [...]from this point of view, mainly in the radical intellectual context, the concept of imposture ‘played a central role’ (p. 307), showing the possibility of addressing criticism levied against Islam to Christianity as well, as the theory of the ‘three impostors’ clearly showed.