The generall historie of the Turkes, from the first beginning of that nation to the rising of the Othoman familie: with all the notable expeditions of the Christian princes against them. Together with the liues and conquests of the Othoman kings and emperours faithfullie collected out of the- best histories, both auntient and moderne, and digested into one continuat historie vntill this present yeare 1603: by Richard Knolles[1]. London : Printed by Adam Islip, 1603. STC 15051.
Mavi Boncuk |
When exactly Knolles began work on his most ambitious scholarly achievement The Historie of the Turkes is difficult to ascertain. The first folio edition appeared in 1603. James VI of Scotland became James I of England in March of that year following the death of Elizabeth I. Knolles took adavntage of the dynastic transition by dedicating the work to “the High and Mightie Prince James”. Knolles’ Historie is based heavily on a range of sixteenth-century printed chronicles and reports. It is, therefore, essentially a synthesis of other works, but a carefully crafted synthesis produced in English. Nothing of this scale and detail had appeared before, in English, on the Ottomans, and it would be another fifty years before a subsequent work in English would become the authority on the subject. Despite this fact, both Samuel Jonson and Lord Byron turned to Knolles centuries later, and both alluded to the richness of his prose style. William Shakespeare, moreover, likely used Knolles’ work (and possibly an earlier manuscript version) as a source for his Othello (ca. 1603-1604).
"It should be noted that such chronicles were initially composed for propaganda purposes. Their aim was to unite all Christians to fight against the Turks, and obviously cannot be treated as true representations of the Ottoman Turks. To sum up, Knolles’ massive and detailed account of the Ottoman Turks was popular and widely read in the Renaissance period. Also, it served as a major source for many historical and literary texts, composed subsequent to this text. Western chroniclers repeated tales of wickedness and cruelty inflicted by the ‘scourge of God’ that portrayed the inhuman cruelties practiced by the Turks.
"As a result, English texts frequently allude to the Turks and Muslims as the ‘barbarous Turk’ ‘terror of Europe’, ‘Scourge of the Islands’, ‘whip of the Christian World’ and ‘Scourge of Christendome’"
Richard Knolles[1], Historie of the Turkes, (London: printed by Adam Islip, 1603;
reprinted 1638), p.42.
See also: Richard Knolles’ The Generall Historie of the Turkes as a Reflection of Christian Historiography by Sıla Şenlen | M.A, Ankara University. The Faculty of Letters. Department of English Language and Literature.
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[1] Richard Knolles (c. 1545 – July 1610) was an English historian, famous for his account of the Ottoman Empire, the first major description in the English language. A native of Northamptonshire, he was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow. Some time after 1571, he left Oxford to become master of a school at Sandwich, Kent, where he died in 1610. In 1603, Knolles published his Generall Historie of the Turkes, of which several editions subsequently appeared, among them Sir Paul Rycaut's edition (1700); Rycaut brought the history down to 1699.The Generall Historie of the Turkes by Richard Knolles, is the first British chronicle written on the military and political aspects of the Ottoman Empire in the medium of English, instead of Latin. This is a clear indication that knowledge about the ‘terror of the World’ was becoming essential not only for the sophisticated reader who could read Latin, but also for the general reading public. Thus, meaning a greater circulation compared to a text in Latin
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