Book Description
Since the Turks first shattered the glory of the French
crusaders in 1396, the Ottoman Empire has exerted a long,
strong pull on Western minds. For six hundred years, the
Empire swelled and declined. Islamic, martial, civilized, and
tolerant, in three centuries it advanced from the dusty
foothills of Anatolia to rule on the Danube and the Nile; at
the Empire's height, Indian rajahs and the kings of France
beseeched its aid. For the next three hundred years the
Empire seemed ready to collapse, a prodigy of survival and
decay. Early in the twentieth century it fell. In this
dazzling evocation of its power, Jason Goodwin explores how
the Ottomans rose and how, against all odds, they lingered
on. In the process he unfolds a sequence of mysteries,
triumphs, treasures, and terrors unknown to most American
readers.
This was a place where pillows spoke and birds were fed in
the snow; where time itself unfolded at a different rate and
clocks were banned; where sounds were different, and even the
hyacinths too strong to sniff. Dramatic and passionate, comic
and gruesome, Lords of the Horizons is a history, a travel
book, and a vision of a lost world all in one.