From Turks to Mongols: David Ayalon's vision of the Eurasian steppe in Islamic history

This paper outlines some aspects of a larger project on the early Ottoman history of present-day Jordan, i.e., the region under Ottoman rule from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. There is research potential for study of the first three centuries after the Ottoman conquest of Bil?d al-Sh?m (historical Syria) in 1516?geographically, the provinces and frontiers beyond Damascus, Aleppo, and historical Palestine; and thematically, the countryside and rural life instead of urban agglomerations. The great challenge of such a study is the yawning gap in available records from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For the present study, I have undertaken a two-pronged interdisciplinary approach. First, I establish the imperial perspective. This is best done by looking at the administrative situation in Jordan during the transition period by mating the available documentary evidence on Jordan with the rich imperial tradition of the early Ottoman period. The central aspect here is to explore the possibility of alternative sources and perform a critical re-assessment of the question of whether the presumed gap in documentary sources for the region during this period exists after all. Second and antipodally, at the local level, it is necessary to survey and to interpret the results of excavations in Jordan and systematically evaluate indicators relating to the Ottoman period as can be gathered from the relevant field reports (which sometimes are not even identified as Ottoman but subsumed under material on the modern period). This step should be supplemented by a rural landscape survey. (from the Introduction).