Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources (review)
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 theNational 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 arst-person narratives on the other.1 Concern that the lengthy chapter devoted to European sources might REVIEWS | 509