Conversations on Europe. “A Global Islamic Revolution? The Jihad Declaration of November 1914 Reconsidered.”

The Dutch scholar Snouck Hurgronje famously characterized the Ottoman declaration of jihad against the Entente in November 1914 as a “holy war made in Germany.” Was the jihad declaration really cooked up in Berlin? Did it result from the wishes of the German emperor, Kaiser Hajji Muhammad Wilhelm II, as Entente critics sometimes referred to him? This talk explores the Ottoman origins of the 1914 declaration.

Mustafa Aksakal is associate professor of history at Georgetown University and the author of The Ottoman Road to War in 1914.

World War I was a major turning point in world history that brought Europe’s long nineteenth century to a close and ushered in the conflicts of the twentieth century. Beginning in 2014, the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia is sponsoring a series of programs—WWI 1914-2014: Reflecting on the 100th Anniversary of WWI—that examine the many ways that WWI changed Europe’s place in the world.

Sponsors: CES, Center for Middle Eastern & North African Studies