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  • Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources
  • Douglas A. Howard
Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources. By Suraiya Faroqhi (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000) 262 pp. $59.95 cloth $24.95 paper

Faroqhi is the leading Ottoman historian of this generation. She wrote the chapter on the seventeenth century in Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert (eds.), An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, 1994), 411-636, and is the author of several monographs on aspects of Ottoman social and economic history, including Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1998). In Approaching Ottoman History, Faroqhi provides a timely new manual for Ottoman historical research that is informed by wide research experience and infused by her warmly personal and deeply humane vision of the purpose of historical study.

After a basic introduction and a chapter called "Entering the Field," Faroqhi surveys the major sources, and collections of sources, for the history of the Ottoman Empire: in Turkey, the vast documentary holdings of the Prime Ministry archives, the main series of which are described; the Topkai Palace archives in Istanbul; the Land Registry archives; the Vakif Foundation archives and Sharia court archives (now mostly in the National Library) in Ankara; state manuscript libraries, especially the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul; and private archives. The description of these collections and their holdings is up-to-date, an especially important fact when it comes to the Prime Ministry archives, since the work of cataloguing there is ongoing. She also describes the main collections of sources in Ottoman successor states and in non-Ottoman Europe.

Faroqhi's mature treatment of the Ottoman sources counters the state-centered approach of recent historiography. Her sensitivity to the genre conventions that governed Ottoman history writing leads her to recognize the uniqueness of Evliya Çelebi's travelog on the one hand, and the surprising routineness of first-person narratives on the other.1 Concern that the lengthy chapter devoted to European sources might [End Page 509] seem to exaggerate their importance, compared to the more important and less known sources in Turkish, is offset, first, by Faroqhi's critical discussion of the methodological problems involved in the use of the European sources, and, second, by a chapter of equal length on Ottoman rural historiography based on Ottoman sources. The chapter before the conclusion surveys the relatively few general histories of the empire. Throughout, Faroqhi is insistent that Ottoman history can be understood in world historical terms as the history of an empire not unlike other empires.

Locating herself in contemporary debates about the value of historical investigation, Faroqhi maintains an admittedly conservative perspective. The critical reading of sources, and the "constant dialogue between the researcher and his/her sources," is at the core of our profession. That dialogue is "meaningless if we were not trying to reconstruct developments taking place in a world outside of our consciousness" (172). Nevertheless, "trends in Ottoman historiography, as in other fields, depend first and foremost on political developments" (212). Accordingly, her book comprises a spirited argument for the continued relevance of social history-a method, she writes, that "is linked to a democratic world view." She reminds us that the vast majority of Ottoman subjects were peasants and nomads, among whom social relations have always been more important than market relations (104). Appealingly and humbly written, Faroqhi's book introduces Ottoman history as a thoroughly human endeavor. [End Page 510]

Douglas A. Howard
Calvin College

Footnotes

1. Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname was published in Ottoman Turkish in ten volumes (Istanbul, 1896-1938), the last two in Romanized script. Partial translations in several languages of various sections of the work have appeared since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Recently, E. J. Brill has undertaken a translation as Klaus Kreiser (ed.), Evliya Çelebi's Book of Travels: Land and People of the Ottoman Empire in the Seventeenth Century: A Corpus of Parital Editions. Several volumes of it have appeared: Martin van Bruinessen and Hendrik Boeschoten (eds. and trans.), Evliya Çelebi in Diyarbekir: The Relevant Section of the Seyahatname (Leiden, 1988); Robert Dankoff (ed. and trans.), Evliya Çelebis Anatolienreise...

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