The Little Ice Age in the Near East

Sam White

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511844058.009

5 - The Little Ice Age in the Near East

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2012

Sam White

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Sam White: Affiliation:
Oberlin College, Ohio

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Summary

For centuries, scholars have speculated about the nature of climate fluctuations and their consequences in historical times. However, only recently have historians and climatologists found ways to reliably and accurately reconstruct these changes. Global warming, in particular, has inspired the creation of ever longer and more comprehensive climate histories based on proxy data, such as tree rings and ice cores, and on events recorded in historical sources. While such efforts have focused principally on early modern Europe, the wealth of weather-related information in Ottoman writings and documents, together with contemporary European reports and modern climatology studies, permit a similar if less detailed reconstruction of climate in the Near East. This climate history reveals both likenesses and disparities with Little Ice Age weather in Europe and in other parts of the world. Both factors – the local forces at work in Near Eastern climate and the global forces that created the Little Ice Age – played a key role in the atmospheric and human drama of the Ottoman crisis.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire , pp. 126 - 139

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511844058.009 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

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