8vo. Volume I: Von der Gründung des osmanischen Reiches bis zum Tode Selim's I, 1300-1520: 820 pp., [4], folding frontispiece map / Volume II: Vom Regierungsantritte Suleiman des Ersten bis zur zweyten Entthronung Mustafa des Ersten, 1520-1623: 867 pp., [5], 1 folding map, contemporary hard boards, slightly rubbed, title inscribed by hand on volume one & gilt on volume II, light spotting, Pesth, Hartleben, 1834- 1840.

Synopsis

The author’s principal publication, a standard work unsurpassed to this day. Also discusses the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which had been part of the Ottoman Empire since 1517. The Austrian Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856) was a dragoman and interpreter in the Levant who mastered Arabic, Persian and Turkish. His translations of Persian poets inspired Goethe and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He “was a prolific and careless writer, had no academic training and was full of ideas and insights, many of which were not only wrong but also slightly mad” Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing. Brunet III. 33; Goedecke VII, 765, 75; Wurzbach VII, 271.