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Civilian Society and Political Power in the Ottoman Empire: A Report on Research in Collective Biography (1480–1830)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Suraiya Faroqhi
Suraiya Faroqhi
Affiliation:
Department of HistoryMiddle East Technical UniversityAnkara
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Extract

Prosopography, or collective biography, as this field of study is sometimes called by scholars dealing with periods later than Greek and Roman antiquity, is a relatively simple and unsophisticated research technique. Basically, it consists of assembling and comparing biographical data for all individuals belonging to a clearly circumscribed group of people. Frequently, but not necessarily, the individuals in question held public office of some kind. This technique recommends itself by the fact that it can be applied even to periods on which very little evidence is available, such as the Roman Republic But on a different level, prosopography can also contribute to our understanding of societies with a fairly rich documentation. Thus, quite a few items among the more recent literature cited by Lawrence Stone in his book on the causes of the seventeenth-century English revolution might be described at least in part upon prosopographical techniques. In the same vein, the research technique has been used by a number of scholars to shed some light upon the institutions and society of the Ottoman Empire.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , February 1985 , pp. 109 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

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