What primary sources do we have on the Ottoman Empire during its height?

by MemeLordArmo

I am doing an essay on the Empire in the early modern period and wish to find some primary sources to further examine and quote. Based on this post https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ead1iu/can_someone_help_me_find_some_primary_sources_on/, I assume clarification of resources is allowed on this subreddit, even if it is for homework.

AksiBashi

There are a lot of primary sources on the early modern Ottoman empire—it might be helpful to be more specific in terms of what you're looking for! Do you want accounts of court life? Urban life? Rural life? Diplomatic documents and correspondence? Travel literature? Art and architecture? Religious rulings?

The Ottoman Empire was a highly-bureacratized state that attracted a great deal of foreign attention, so there's a lot of material from both internal and external observers—I can recommend a few general resources (in order of how useful I'm guessing they'll be to you), but more context would probably be helpful for further recommendations.

  1. Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname (Book of Travels). Assuming the mid-seventeenth century falls under your purview, this is quite possibly the most widely cited primary source there is! Evliya's travels fill about ten volumes in the Ottoman Turkish, and he comments on all sorts of things: food, language, clothing, history... for a broad look at the general structure of Ottoman society in the period (as well as a fantastic example of Ottoman views of foreign lands), you can't do much better. The full text isn't really accessible in English, but there are a variety of edited selections, most of which take specific geographical regions as their themes. (The translations by Robert Dankoff are usually considered the best, when available.)
  2. The Ottoman documents collected in Hani Khafipour, The Empires of the Near East and India, cover a wide range of contexts and experiences, from fetvas to political philosophy to the occult sciences.
  3. A few European travelers: Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire); Nicolas de Nicolay (geographer and traveler); two Venetian ambassadors. Bonus: an Arab ambassador to the Ottoman court, mid-sixteenth century.
  4. Autobiographies: Mimar Sinan (architect, sixteenth century); Osman Ağa (soldier/prisoner of war in Austria, early eighteenth century).
  5. Archival materials: a general sourcebook; fermans; legal documents; diplomatic correspondence; treaties.

So, anyways, as you can see, there's a lot out there! (And that's not even including things like poetry, art/architecture, or coinage, all of which can be considered primary sources in their own right.) Hopefully these provide a good starting point—and if you have any more specific questions, feel free to ask!