An Ottoman Tragedy: History and Historiography at Play

In the space of six years early in the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire underwent such turmoil and trauma—the assassination of the young ruler Osman II, the re—enthronement and subsequent abdication of his mad uncle Mustafa I, for a start—that a scholar pronounced the period's three—day—long dramatic climax "an Ottoman Tragedy." Under Gabriel Piterberg's deft analysis, this period of crisis becomes a historical laboratory for the history of the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth centu...