The Historian

Oriental historians are quick to reverance the art and culture of the 18th-19th century Turkish world, but often times against the measure of European standards. I am not quick to disfigure Oriental historians as the purveyors of a skewed understanding of the East, but I will say that when Orientalists measure the Eastern standard against the Western one, they are bound to come to muddled conclusions. Turkish identity has been molded by centuries of insularity, apathy for Europe, and complete rapture of all things Ottoman. After all, they were the coffee drinkers, the casbah owners, the Sultans of Istanbul, the harem seekers, the viziers, the pashas, the whirling dervishes, etc. What could the east possibly learn from the west? The answer could be found in a scientific revolution that only the secular west could provoke. Although science was always part and parcel to Islamic understanding (Al-Farabi, Al-Ghazzali, Al-Razi, the list goes on), it remained a static subject. Muslims did not...