Origins of Refugee Resettlement in Modern Middle East

Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State touches the most unchartered terrain in the history of the Ottoman Empire: management of Muslim refugees from North Caucasian region in the second half of the nineteenth century. The processes of settlement and management of refugees mainly from the Northern Caucus region is presented by the author as a technique or an art of government of the Ottoman Empire to maintain and enhance the exercise of influence and power over its majority non-Turkish subjects. The Ottoman administration had three major purposes to serve with the pro-migration policy and resettlement of refuges: to increase the population of a shrinking empire, to rein in Turkish nomads and to strengthen the empire’s hold on Christian-majority frontier regions. This work does much more than retelling the history of Caucasian Muslim diaspora in the Ottoman land. Two significant questions, how these refugees transformed the Empire, and most importantly, and how the Sultans managed the settlements of Muslims from the Caucasian region demographically, ethnically and politically in their favour have been addressed in a way that is concerned with even frame-to-frame accounts of it.