Abstract

The result of years of travel in the Levant, Pierre Belon’s Observations (1553) demonstrates a humanist’s attempt to collect, update, and make sense of “scientific” as well as linguistic knowledge in the sixteenth century. It unveils the practice of and the experimentation with humanism by a French scholar who discovers that, in the Ottoman Empire, past and present coexist, nature and language collide but also collaborate. It reveals strong early modern French interests in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and “Turquie.”

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