THE Fall of Ottomans:
A Khaldunian Study Of Tariq Ali’s The Stone Woman
Abstract
The Stone Woman is a complex story of the decline of the Ottomans and the rise of Christians in Europe. By abandoning the strong Turkish asabiyyah (social solidarity) and ignoring the prominent features of Islamic umran (civilisation), the Ottoman Empire fell, and the Christians gained power due to their advanced knowledge and strong social solidarity. As the fall of the Turks and the rise of the Christians occurred cyclically, the Cyclical Theory of the rise and fall of civilisations in Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah seems appropriate for the theoretical outline. It also explores how the Khaldunian concepts of asabiyyah and umran are related to Ali’s alternative history of the Christian-Muslim relations. The research concludes that Turkey has remained the center of the East-West conflict. The Middle East’s contemporary socio-political issues and ethnic strife originated in the Ottoman era.
Keywords: Ibn Khaldun, Cyclic Theory, Ottoman Empire, Asabiyyah, Rise and Fall of Civilisations
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