Paul Wittek | |
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Born | |
Died | 13 June 1978 | (aged 84)
Nationality | Austrian |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Vienna |
Thesis | Die Entstehung der Zenturienordnung. Studie zur ältesten römischen Sozial- und Verfassungsgeschichte (1920) |
Influences | Ahmet Refik Altınay, Vasilij Bartolʹd, Stefan George, Mehmet Fuat Köprülü, Friedrich Kraelitz , Johannes Heinrich Mordtmann , Max Weber[1] |
Academic work | |
Discipline | |
Sub-discipline | Ottoman studies |
Institutions | School of Oriental and African Studies |
Doctoral students | Victor Louis Ménage |
Notable students | Peter Charanis, Stanford J. Shaw, Elizabeth Zachariadou |
Main interests | early Ottoman history |
Notable works | The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (1938) |
Notable ideas | Ghaza thesis |
Paul Wittek (11 January 1894, Baden bei Wien — 13 June 1978, Eastcote, Middlesex) was an Austrian Orientalist and historian. His 1938 thesis on the rise of the Ottoman Empire, known as the ghazi thesis, argues that the driving force behind Ottoman state-building was the expansion of Islam. Until the 1980s, his theory was the most influential and dominant explanation of the formation of the Ottoman Empire.