“What are the best books about the Ottoman Empire?” We looked at 206 of the top books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question!

The top 18 titles, all appearing on 2 or more “Best Ottoman Empire” book lists, are ranked below by how many lists they appear on. The remaining 150+ titles, as well as the lists we used are in alphabetical order at the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

Top 18 Ottoman Empire Books

18 .) A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire by M. Şükrü Hanioğlu

Lists It Appears On:

• Dig Books
• Goodreads 2
• Goodreads 3

“At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire straddled three continents and encompassed extraordinary ethnic and cultural diversity among the estimated thirty million people living within its borders. It was perhaps the most cosmopolitan state in the world–and possibly the most volatile. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire now gives scholars and general readers a concise history of the late empire between 1789 and 1918, turbulent years marked by incredible social change.

Moving past standard treatments of the subject, M. Sükrü Hanioglu emphasizes broad historical trends and processes more than single events. He examines the imperial struggle to centralize amid powerful opposition from local rulers, nationalist and other groups, and foreign powers. He looks closely at the socioeconomic changes this struggle wrought and addresses the Ottoman response to the challenges of modernity. Hanioglu shows how this history is not only essential to comprehending modern Turkey, but is integral to the histories of Europe and the world. He brings Ottoman society marvelously to life in all its facets–cultural, diplomatic, intellectual, literary, military, and political–and he mines imperial archives and other documents from the period to describe it as it actually was, not as it has been portrayed in postimperial nationalist narratives. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the legacy left in this empire’s ruins–a legacy the world still grapples with today.”

Purchase / Learn More

17 .) An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire 1300 – 1600 by Halil İnalcık

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads 2
• Goodreads 3
• Thought Co.

This book provides a richly detailed account of the social and economic history of the Ottoman Empire, one of the major empires of modern times. In so doing it spans seven centuries, from the origins of the Empire around 1300 to the eve of its destruction during World War I. In four chronological sections the contributors provide the reader with valuable information on land tenure systems, population, trade and commerce and the industrial economy. This is an essential book for understanding contemporary developments in both the Middle East and the post-Soviet Balkan world.

Purchase / Learn More

16 .) Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk

Lists It Appears On:

• Signature
• Goodreads 2
• Rick Steves

Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy–or hüzün–that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from the lives of his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters–both Turkish and foreign–who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce’s Dublin and Borges’ Buenos Aires, Pamuk’s Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.

Purchase / Learn More

15 .) Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire by Jason Goodwin

Lists It Appears On:

• Dig Books
• Goodreads 2
• Goodreads 3

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.

Purchase / Learn More

14 .) My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads 1
• Goodreads 2
• Rick Steves

The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed. The ruling elite therefore mustn’t know the full scope or nature of the project, and panic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears. The only clue to the mystery–or crime? –lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex and power.

Purchase / Learn More

13 .) Portrait of a Turkish Family by Irfan Orga

Lists It Appears On:

• Five books
• Goodreads 2
• Rick Steves

Describes in chilling, yet affectionate, detail the disintegration of a wealthy Ottoman family, both financially and emotionally. It is rich with the scent of fin de sieclé Istanbul in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. His mother was a beauty, married at thirteen, as befitted a Turkish woman of her class. His grandmother was an eccentric autocrat, determined at all costs to maintain her traditional habits. But the war changed everything. Death and financial disaster reigned, the Sultan was overthrown, and Turkey became a republic.

Purchase / Learn More

12 .) Suleyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World by André Clot

Lists It Appears On:

• Rick Steves
• Thought Co.
• Flipkart

Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (r.1520-1566) dominated the eastern Mediterranean and Ottoman worlds – and the imagination of his contemporaries – very much as his fellow sovereigns Charles V, Francis I and Henry VIII in the west. He greatly expanded the Ottoman empire, capturing Rhodes, Belgrade, Hungary, the Red Sea coast of Arabia, and even besieging Vienna. Patron and legislator as well as conqueror, he stamped his name on an age. These specially-commissioned essays by leading experts examine Suleyman’s reign in its wider political and diplomatic context, both Ottoman and European.

Purchase / Learn More

11 .) The Architect’s Apprentice by Elif Shafak

Lists It Appears On:

• Signature
• Goodreads 1
• Goodreads 2

In her latest novel, Turkey’s preeminent female writer spins an epic tale spanning nearly a century in the life of the Ottoman Empire. In 1540, twelve-year-old Jahan arrives in Istanbul. As an animal tamer in the sultan’s menagerie, he looks after the exceptionally smart elephant Chota and befriends (and falls for) the sultan’s beautiful daughter, Princess Mihrimah. A palace education leads Jahan to Mimar Sinan, the empire’s chief architect, who takes Jahan under his wing as they construct (with Chota’s help) some of the most magnificent buildings in history. Yet even as they build Sinan’s triumphant masterpieces—the incredible Suleymaniye and Selimiye mosques—dangerous undercurrents begin to emerge, with jealousy erupting among Sinan’s four apprentices.

Purchase / Learn More

10 .) The Bellini Card by Jason Goodwin

Lists It Appears On:

• Five books
• Goodreads 2
• Goodreads 1

“Istanbul, 1840: the new sultan, Abdülmecid, has heard a rumor that Bellini’s vanished masterpiece, a portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror, may have resurfaced in Venice. Yashim, our eunuch detective, is promptly asked to investigate, but — aware that the sultan’s advisers are against any extravagant repurchase of the painting — decides to deploy his disempowered Polish ambassador friend, Palewski, to visit Venice in his stead. Palewski arrives in disguise in down-and-out Venice, where a killer is at large as dealers, faded aristocrats, and other unknown factions seek to uncover the whereabouts of the missing Bellini.

But is it the Bellini itself that endangers all, or something associated with its original loss? And why is it that all the killer’s victims are somehow tied to the alluring Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria? Will the Austrians unmask Palewski, or will the killer find him first? Only Yashim can uncover the truth behind the manifold mysteries.”

Purchase / Learn More

9 .) The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire by Alan Warwick Palmer

Lists It Appears On:

• Dig Books
• Goodreads 2
• Goodreads 3

The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire offers a provocative view of the empire’s decline, from the failure to take Vienna in 1683 to the abolition of the Sultanate by Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) in 1922 during a revolutionary upsurge in Turkish national pride. The narrative contains instances of violent revolt and bloody reprisals, such as the massacres of Armenians in 1896, and other “ethnic episodes” in Crete and Macedonia. More generally, it emphasizes recurring problems: competition between religious and secular authority; the acceptance or rejection of Western ideas; and the strength or weakness of successive Sultans. The book also highlights the special challenges of the early twentieth century, when railways and oilfields gave new importance to Ottoman lands in the Middle East.

Purchase / Learn More

8 .) The Ottoman Age of Exploration by Giancarlo Casale

Lists It Appears On:

• Dig Books
• Goodreads 2
• Goodreads 3

The Ottoman Age of Exploration is the first comprehensive historical account of this century-long struggle for global dominance, a struggle that raged from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Straits of Malacca, and from the interior of Africa to the steppes of Central Asia. Based on extensive research in the archives of Turkey and Portugal, as well as materials written on three continents and in a half dozen languages, it presents an unprecedented picture of the global reach of the Ottoman state during the sixteenth century. It does so through a dramatic recounting of the lives of sultans and viziers, spies, corsairs, soldiers-of-fortune, and women from the imperial harem. Challenging traditional narratives of Western dominance, it argues that the Ottomans were not only active participants in the Age of Exploration, but ultimately bested the Portuguese in the game of global politics by using sea power, dynastic prestige, and commercial savoir faire to create their own imperial dominion throughout the Indian Ocean.

Purchase / Learn More

7 .) The Ottoman Centuries by John Patrick Douglas Balfour

Lists It Appears On:

• Dig Books
• Goodreads 2
• Goodreads 3

Purchase / Learn More

6 .) The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600 by Halil İnalcık

Lists It Appears On:

• Thought Co.
• Goodreads 2
• Goodreads 3

A preeminent scholar of Turkish history vividly portrays 300 years of this distinctively Eastern culture as it grew from a military principality to the world’s most powerful Islamic state. He paints a striking picture of the prominence of religion and warfare in everyday life, as well as the traditions of statecraft, administration, social values, financial, and land policies. “…masterly…Halil Inalcik is one of the foremost living students of Ottoman history.

Purchase / Learn More

5 .) The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe by Daniel Goffman

Lists It Appears On:

• Dig Books
• Goodreads 2
• Goodreads 3
• Thought Co.

Despite the fact that its capital city and over one third of its territory was within the continent of Europe, the Ottoman Empire has consistently been regarded as a place apart, inextricably divided from the West by differences of culture and religion. A perception of its militarism, its barbarism, its tyranny, the sexual appetites of its rulers and its pervasive exoticism has led historians to measure the Ottoman world against a western standard and find it lacking. In recent decades, a dynamic and convincing scholarship has emerged that seeks to comprehend and, in the process, to de-exoticize this enduring realm. Dan Goffman provides a thorough introduction to the history and institutions of the Ottoman Empire from this new standpoint, and presents a claim for its inclusion in Europe. His lucid and engaging book–an important addition to New Approaches in European History–will be essential reading for undergraduates.

Purchase / Learn More

4 .) The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure Of Power by Colin Imber

Lists It Appears On:

• Dig Books
• Goodreads 2
• Goodreads 3
• Thought Co.

“An essential introductory textbook that provides students with an authoritative survey of the history of the Ottoman Empire: from its obscure origins in the fourteenth century, through its rise to world-power status, to the troubled times of the seventeenth century. Colin Imber explores how the Sultans governed their realms and the limits on their authority.

This is an ideal core text for modules on Ottoman History or the Ottoman Empire – or a supplementary text for broader modules on Mediterranean History, Early Modern History, Islamic History, Middle Eastern History, Turkish History or Imperial History – which may be offered at the upper levels of an undergraduate History, Turkish, European Studies or Middle Eastern Studies degree. In addition it is a crucial resource for students who may be studying the Ottoman Empire for the first time as part of a taught postgraduate degree in Early Modern History, Turkish, or Islamic Studies.”

Purchase / Learn More

3 .) The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922 by Donald Quataert

Lists It Appears On:

• Dig Books
• Goodreads 2
• Goodreads 3
• Thought Co.

The Ottoman Empire was one of the most important non-Western states to survive from medieval to modern times, and played a vital role in European and global history. It continues to affect the peoples of the Middle East, the Balkans and central and western Europe to the present day. This new survey examines the major trends during the latter years of the empire, paying attention to gender issues and to hotly-debated topics such as the treatment of minorities. In this second edition, Donald Quataert has updated his authoritative text, revised the bibliographies, and included brief biographies of major figures of the Byzantines and the post-Ottoman Middle East.

Purchase / Learn More

2 .) Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières

Lists It Appears On:

• Signature
• The Guardian
• Goodreads 1
• Goodreads 2
• Rick Steves

In his first novel since Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernières creates a world, populates it with characters as real as our best friends, and launches it into the maelstrom of twentieth-century history. The setting is a small village in southwestern Anatolia in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Everyone there speaks Turkish, though they write it in Greek letters. It’s a place that has room for a professional blasphemer; where a brokenhearted aga finds solace in the arms of a Circassian courtesan who isn’t Circassian at all; where a beautiful Christian girl named Philothei is engaged to a Muslim boy named Ibrahim. But all of this will change when Turkey enters the modern world. Epic in sweep, intoxicating in its sensual detail, Birds Without Wings is an enchantment.

Purchase / Learn More

1 .) Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire by Caroline Finkel

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads 2
• Goodreads 3
• Rick Steves
• Thought Co.
• Dig Books

The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and most influential empires in world history. Its reach extended to three continents and it survived for more than six centuries, but its history is too often colored by the memory of its bloody final throes on the battlefields of World War I. In this magisterial work-the first definitive account written for the general reader-renowned scholar and journalist Caroline Finkel lucidly recounts the epic story of the Ottoman Empire from its origins in the thirteenth century through its destruction in the twentieth.

Purchase / Learn More

The 150+ Additional Books About The Ottoman Empire

11 Best Ottoman Empire History Book Sources/Lists