PREFACE. BETWEEN thirteen and fourteen years ago, I prepared a series of Lectures on Turkish History, which were delivered in University College, London, during the summer of 1841. I carefully studied the great work of Von Hammer on the Ottoman empire for the purpose of those lectures, and I made abstracts of the larger number of its volumes. I did the same with Knolles, Alix, and other authors on the same subject. The increasing interest of Turkish history, and a request to lecture on it at the St. John's Wood Literary Institution, caused me last year to examine my old notes, and to attempt to arrange them in a volume for publication. Little, however, of those lectures appears in the present work in its original form. I have recast the entire subject, and have again thoroughly examined the ample treasures of Von Hammer's history; and I have also carefully sought information from Montecuculi, VOL. I. b Roe, Hanway, D'Hosson, Thornton, Ubicini, Porter, Marmont, Sir F. Smith, Col. Chesney, Urquhart, Möltke, Hamel, Sismondi, Ranke, Finlay, and many others. I have also availed myself of the fragmentary wealth that lies heaped up in the back numbers of our periodical literature. The indices to both "the Quarterly" and "the Edinburgh" point out several articles on Turkish subjects, from which I have repeatedly gained intelligence and warnings. I have also consulted some admirable papers entitled "Chapters on Turkish History," which were contributed about ten years ago to "Blackwood" by the late Mr. Hulme, a profound Oriental scholar, and a writer of such taste and vigour, that if he had lived to complete the work, portions of which were then sketched out by him, a full, accurate, and brilliant History of the Turks would have ceased to be one of the desiderata in our literature. Von Hammer's History of the Ottoman Empire will always be the standard European book on this subject. That history was the result of the labours of thirty years, during which Von Hammer explored, in addition to the authorities which his predecessors had made use of, the numerous works of the Turkish and other Oriental writers on the Ottoman history, and the other rich sources of intelligence which are to be found in the archives of Venice, Austria, and other states that have been involved in relations of hostility or amity with the Sublime Porte. Von Hammer's long residence in the East, and his familiarity with the institutions and habits, as well as with the literature of the |