Silent Teachers

Silent Teachers considers for the first time the influence of Ottoman scholarly practices and reference tools on oriental learning in early modern Europe.

Nil Ö. Palab-y-k, Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, conducts research at the crossroads of intellectual history, manuscript culture, and history of the book. As a postdoctoral fellow funded by the British Academy and the Humboldt Foundation, she worked at the Rylands Library and Institute, Manchester, and the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität, Munich. Her love of archives took her to the finest libraries in Europe, and led to visiting fellowships at the Scaliger Institute, Leiden, and Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel. She published on humanist scholarship, early modern orientalism, and Greek printing in Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

Introduction / Chapter One: Earliest printed books on Turkey: Georgievits and Postel on the Turkish language / Chapter Two: The advent of scholarly books on Turkey: Leunclavius' Ottoman Annals and History, Crusius' Greece under Turkish Rule with Scaliger's Annotations / Chapter Three: First printed grammars of Turkish: Megiser and Du Ryer / Chapter Four: Oriental studies in Leiden: The manuscript Turkish dictionaries of Deusing and Golius / Chapter Five: A fine library: Golius and his Turkish books / Conclusions