The knowledge is with the Ottomans

For a long time, scientists believed that after the Islamic Golden Age in the Middle Ages, the Ottoman Empire grew isolated from cultural and technological aspects, neglecting renewal, which put it on the path of stagnation and decline. But this book challenges this widespread Western image of the Ottomans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as backward and lacking scientific productivity. In this first book of its kind in English in sixty years, Mery Shepherd Mosenson confirms that Ottoman society and Ottoman culture created a fertile environment that fostered diverse scientific activity, and proves that the Ottomans excelled in modifying others' innovations for their own needs and developing them. For example, in 1877, the Ottoman Empire had the seventh-longest electrical telegraph system in the world. In fact, the Ottomans were among the most advanced nations in the structure of modern communications. To support her claims about science in the Ottoman Empire, the author studied patterns of education, the role of the state in technological activity, and the roles of Ottomans who spoke Turkish or Arabic, produced, benefited from, and changed scientific practices. The results showed that the Ottomans' participation in science was a driving force that helped the empire remain a great power for six centuries. Cover: An illustration depicting Osman I (1299-1326), founder of the Ottoman Empire, from the miniature of the book "Kifayat al-Insaniyah fi Shama'il al-‘Uthmani" (1579) by Luqman, with illustrations by Nishan Osman, Istanbul University Library.