Luther and Suleyman^*

The Importance of History for Economic Development

“…The analysis identifies a positive effect of the Protestant religion on literacy and industrialization in 19th century Prussia. (Also related is the evidence put forth by Iyigun (2008) showing that the rise of the Ottoman Empire and its movement into Europe is partly responsible for the Protestant Reformation.) 18 See Inikori (2002) for the alternative view that the profits that accrued to Western Europe during the three corner Atlantic trade explains much of its growth during the time.…”

Religious Conversion in Colonial Africa

“…By Nathan Nunn* Iyigun (2008), which provides evidence linking the Protestant Reformation to the sixteenthcentury expansion of the Ottoman Empire into continental Europe.…”

Lessons from the Ottoman Harem on Culture, Religion, and Wars

“…It implies that, while Ottomans engaged its European foes once every three years on average, they did so once every decade when a sultan with a European matrilineal descent was at the helm. To put this in further context, and as I have shown in Iyigun (2008), of the 93 Ottoman-European military conflicts that occurred between 1400 CE and 1700 CE, 63 were historically documented to be initiated by the Ottomans (roughly about 68 percent), but only 17 out of 52 of the Ottomans confrontations with other sovereigns and groups elsewhere (including Anatolia) were instigated by the empire itself (about 33 percent). 31 Even more remarkable is the fact that most of the Ottomans' European ventures were front-loaded: in the period between 1400 and 1550, Ottomans engaged Europeans in 51 conflicts; of those, 40 were begun with some Ottoman initiative (which is close than 80 percent).…”

“…The main focus of some papers is religion and culture in general (e.g., North, 1990, Iannaccone, 1992, Temin, 1997, Glaeser and Sacerdote, 2002, Barro and McCleary, 2005, Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales, 2006, and Spolaore-Wacziarg, 2009). Other papers in this line emphasize how individual behavior and the evolution of various institutions interact with adherence to a specific religion, such as Judaism, Islam or different denominations within Christianity (e.g., Greif, 1993, Botticini and Eckstein, 2005, 2007, Kuran, 2004a, Arrunada, 2005, Abramitzky, 2008, Iyigun, 2008, Becker and Woessmann, 2009). The work below relates to this strand since it examines how the interplay between institutional state objectives versus rulers' personal motives influenced religiously-motivated and sustained international conflicts.…”