Bücher von Bruce (Wesleyan University Masters

Discussing the role of Arabs in the Ottoman Empire for the four centuries that they were its subjects, this book argues that both Sunni religious scholars and urban notables were willing collaborators in the imperial enterprise, and without their support the Ottoman Empire would not have ruled the Arab lands for as long as they did.

Masters explores the evolution of Christian and Jewish communities in the Ottoman empire over four hundred years. Early communities lived with the hierarchy of Muslim law, but the nineteenth century marked the beginning of tensions between Muslims and Christians and the twentieth-century rhetoric of religious fundamentalism.