Wittek's The Rise of the Ottoman Empire was first published by the Royal Asiatic Society in 1938, and has been out of print for more than a quarter of a century. The opportunity has been taken at the present reissue of the test of Wittek's 1937 London lectures to bring together in one volume translations of his other studies on Ottoman history, dating mainly from his Brussels years, of which the Rise was in effect, a summation and a distillation. The majority of these other studies - 'Two Chapters on the History of Rum', 'The Sultan of Rum', 'Religious Warriors in the early Ottoman State' and...

The study of Ottoman history has resulted in the construction of a number of Ottoman a pastsa, some of which have been proved recoverable and essentially durable, while others have been seen to owe too much to extraneous preconceptions. In the articles collected here, Dr Heywood has questioned some of the perceived certainties in the field of Ottoman history and historiography, focusing in particular on the work of Paul Wittek and the idea of the 'frontier'. Other studies are based on the abundant surviving documentation, and look at specific topics in 17th-century Ottoman history and in...