The Ambassador's Notebook - Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage by Viorel Panaite Hardcover

About the Book

Using never before studied documents from the Manuscript Turc 130 (BnF, Paris), compiled in a unique structure by Ambassador François Savary de Brèves, Viorel Panaite offers a comprehensive picture of the Ottoman Mediterranean around 1600, with the French merchants as protagonists.

Book Synopsis

Using never before studied documents from Manuscript Turc 130 (BnF, Paris), compiled in a unique structure by Ambassador François Savary de Brèves, Viorel Panaite offers a comprehensive picture of the Ottoman Mediterranean around 1600, with the French as protagonists. He explores the foreigner's condition (müstemin) in the Abode of Islam, consular jurisdiction, the Flemish as protégés, and takes the reader on a journey to the cities of Marseille, Tunis, Alexandria, Aleppo and Istanbul. He focuses on the capitulations' provisions about merchants, navigation, trade, goods and taxes, as well as diplomatic efforts to curb the illegal actions of provincial authorities, ship captains, North African pirates and English privateers.

About the Author

Viorel Panaite, Ph.D. (1995), University of Bucharest, is Professor of Islamic Ottoman history at that university, and researcher at the Institute for South-East European Studies of the Romanian Academy. He has published extensively on Western merchants in the Ottoman Mediterranean, as well as on war, peace and tributaries, such as Ottoman Law of War and Peace: The Ottoman Empire and its Tribute-Payers from the North of the Danube (Brill, 2019).