Books like Ottomans by Marc David Baer

A comprehensive English encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, featuring 400+ A‑to‑Z entries by 90 experts, maps, photographs, and cross‑references that illuminate the empire’s history, institutions, and lasting influence on the Middle East and Balkans.

"The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad is a saga of ambition, achievement, self-sacrificing nobility and blood rivalry, and it also sheds light on some of the complexities of our modern world. For within this fifty-year span of conquest and empire-building, Barnaby Rogerson identifies the seeds of discord that destroyed the unity of Islam, and traces the roots of the schism between Sunni and Shia Muslims to the rivalry of the two people who best knew and loved the Prophet: his cousin and son-in-law Ali, and his wife Aisha." "The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad recounts the lives of the handful of individuals - the first four Caliphs, the Prophet's widows and the conquering generals - who led and influenced Islam after the death of Muhammad. Their achievements are chronicled, but so too are the conflicting ambitions that led to civil war. So that although an empire was forged, in the process Muhammad's own family would be disinherited, his grandson murdered, the revered temple of God at Mecca, the Kaaba, burned to the ground, and the first copy of the Koran stained with the blood of a Caliph."--Jacket.

"This skillfully written text presents the full sweep of Ottoman history from its beginnings on the Byzantine frontier in about 1300, through its development as an empire, to its late eighteenth-century confrontation with a rapidly modernizing Europe. Itzkowitz delineates the fundamental institutions of the Ottoman state, the major divisions within the society, and the basic ideas on government and social structure. Throughout, Itzkowitz emphasizes the Ottomans' own conception of their historical experience, and in so doing penetrates the surface view provided by the insights of Western observers of the Ottoman world to the core of Ottoman existence."