The Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran, 1639-1682: Diplomacy and Borderlands in the Early Modern Middle East

This book provides a new perspective on Ottoman-Safavid relations after 1639 by using scattered archival documents, chronicle entries, and travelogues to reconstruct the groundwork of these dealings, highlight trends, and contextualize the facts. It challenges the assumption that the mid-seventeenth-century Middle East interstate scene was eventless and documents how the parties bargained, displayed goodwill, made demands, delivered threats, and brought in third parties.

Format: Hardback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 31 March 2024
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

After 1639, the Ottoman-Safavid relations have been disregarded as insignificant and deemed insufficient for thorough research, leading to a lack of an introductory section that provides basic facts, let alone a comprehensive treatment. This book presents, for the first time, a comprehensive account of the mission exchanges, correspondence, negotiations, and borderland encounters between the Ottomans, Safavids, and Europeans by utilizing scattered and previously untapped archival documents, chronicle entries, and travelogues. By meticulously compiling the information derived from these sources, the book reconstructs the foundations of these interactions, highlights trends, and contextualizes the events. It challenges the notion that the mid-seventeenth-century interstate landscape of the Middle East was devoid of significant events and documents the intense bargaining, goodwill, demands, threats, displays of power, requests for privileges and concessions, and involvement of third parties by the parties involved, all within an unequal power dynamic, hierarchical structure, precedence, ranks, and protocol.

Weight: 464g
Dimension: 161 x 241 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781399510103