This is not entirely surprising given the fact that, as a “trade” book, God’s Shadow (henceforth cited as GS) has been the object of an effective publicity campaign mounted by the author, his agent, and their diligent circle. It has rapidly been met with popular acclaim in the press, while other recent scholarly studies of Selim by young scholars have not been accorded any such attention. Entitled God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World (Liveright, 2020), the book also modestly claims that it is an “innovative, even revolutionary” (p. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.Ī historian from Yale University, Alan Mikhail, has recently published a popular biography of the Ottoman Sultan Selim (r. Illustration from “Exposition on the Prophet Ezra”, a manuscript Ottoman history by Felix da Costa (1687).

The book is about people building new pathways in the year 1000, discovering that they share the globe with other cultures, that their homes are just one part of a much larger picture.CORNELL FLEISCHER 1, CEMAL KAFADAR 2 and SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM 3ġUniversity of Chicago, 2Harvard University, 3University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Boat building was improved, but those great distances were traversed on land, wind, and animal power alone. In the year 1000, we start to see trade across great distances, despite the fact that nobody had sophisticated transportation technology. The Silk Road was an early harbinger which showed the promise of exchange with neighbors in the centuries before 1000. New routes linked the continents together. The Vikings cross from Greenland to what is today Canada. People embarked on ocean travel, who hadn’t strayed far previously. A wave of Islam came to Northwest China as part of that movement. The answer is yes.Īround the year 1000, people around the globe started to realize for the first time that they could leave home, travel to other places, find out about their neighbors and adopt new approaches. So, I embarked on a five year investigation into that question. I started wondering if these momentous changes were connected in any way. And that the Chinese signed a treaty with Northern people called the Liao around 1000 which set up conditions for change. I knew that the Vikings touched down in Canada around the year 1000.

The region, which had been Buddhist up until then, was conquered by Muslim rulers. In the book, I write about an oasis called Khotan, in the northwest corner of China, that fell to Islamic armies just after the year 1000. “My Silk Road book ends around the year 1000. Foreign Policy & International Relations.

The year 1000 valerie hansen review