Kemal H. Karpat (Editor), and Robert Zens (Co-editor). Ottoman Borderlands : Issues, Personalities, and Political Changes. The University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
Ottoman Borderlands brings together articles by prominent scholars to fill a large gap in Ottoman studies—the study of the borderlands. Despite the pressing power of the central government, the frontier provinces and the semiautonomous borderlands were cultural-social units with their own identities and their own internal dynamics. While the core provinces were more Ottoman, Islamic, and Turkish-speaking, the borderlands were culturally, religiously, and linguistically more heterogeneous, as well as more politically autonomous.