Publisher's Synopsis
Gibbons' book is a history of the Ottoman Empire written in the early 20th century. From the preface: "Four years of residence in the Ottoman Empire, chiefly in Constantinople, during the most disastrous period of its decline, have led me to investigate its origin. This book is written because I feel that the result of my research brings a new point of view to the student of the twentieth-century problems of the Near East, as well as to those who are interested in fourteenth-century Europe. If we study the past, it is to understand the present and to prepare for the future... The risk that I run of incurring criticism from Oriental philologists on the ground of nomenclature is very great. I ask their indulgence. Will they not take into consideration the fact that there is no accepted standard among English-speaking scholars for the transliteration of Turkish and Slavic names ? Wherever possible, I have adopted the spelling in general usage in the Near East, and in English standard lexicons and encyclopaedias. When a general usage cannot be determined, I have frequently been at a loss. There was the effort to be as consistent in spelling as sources and authorities would permit. But where consistency was lacking in originals, a consistent transliteration sometimes presented difficulties with which I was incompetent to cope. Even a philologist, with a system, would be puzzled when he found his sources conflicting with each other in spelling, and-as is often the case-with themselves. And if a philologist thinks that he can establish his system by transliterating the spoken word, let him travel from Constantinople to Cairo overland, and he will have a bewildering collection of variants before he reaches his journey's end. I was not long in Turkey before I learned that Osman and Othman were both correct. It depended merely upon whether you were in Constantinople or Konia ! After you had decided to accept the pronunciation of the capital, you were told that Konia is the Tours of Turkey."
