Published Sources

Turkish Historical Review 3 (2012) 115–117 brill.nl/thr

Published sources

Bejtullah Destani and Jason Tomes (eds.), Albania’s Greatest Friend. Aubrey Herbert and the Making of Modern Albania. Diaries and Papers 1904-1923, with a Preface by Noel Malcolm (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011), pp. xxiv + 371, ISBN 978 1 84855 444 4.

This volume, published by I.B. Tauris in association with the Centre for Albanian Studies, London, brings together a collection of diary entries, papers and articles written by Aubrey Herbert (1880-1923) between 1904 and 1923. The editors note that Herbert was not always a regular diarist, and for this reason they have included a selection of his letters, memoranda and published articles, taken mainly from the Somerset Record Office and The National Archives, in order the fill in gaps where the diaries were silent or where the information they provided was insufficient. Herbert, who became a Conservative MP for South Somerset (later Yeovil) in 1911, was renowned for his efforts to achieve an independent Albania. The volume is divided into four sections: Turkey-in-Europe 1904-12, Albanian independence 1912-14, The First World War 1914-18 and Albania restored 1918-23. In some cases the editors have added brief introductions to the documents in order to contextu- alise them. The volume also contains a selection of photographs of Herbert, of various locations in Albania and of political figures of the time, both Albanian and British.

Robert Dankoff and Sooyong Kim (eds. and trans.), An Ottoman Traveller. Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliya Çelebi (London: Eland, 2010), pp. xxxviii + 482, ISBN 978 190601144 4 (hardcover), ISBN 978 190601158 1 (2011 paperback).

This volume consists of an introduction, which includes biographical information on Evliya Çelebi and his work, and selections taken from the ten volumes of Evliya Çelebi’s famous travels and translated by the editors. The text is enriched by illustrations, both in black and white and in colour, taken from various collections. The volume is a useful addition to the publications of

Evliya Çelebi’s writings which are here made accessible to an English-reading audience.

Jane Hathaway (ed.), Al-Jabartī’s History of Egypt (Princeton: Markus Wiener Pulishers, 2009), pp. xxxiv + 357, ISBN 978 1 55876 447-7.

This work, published in the Princeton Series on the Middle East, edited by Bernard Lewis and Şükrü Hanioğlu, is an abridgement, with new introduction and commentary, of Thomas Philipp and Moshe Perlmann’s four volume edition (in two volumes) of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī’s History of Egypt: ‘Ajā’ib al-āthār fī’l-tarājim wa’l-akhbār, published in 1994 by Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart. It contains a short introduction followed by excerpts from Al-Jabarti’s chronicle depicting the events of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Egypt and, in particular, Cairo. Each excerpt is pre- ceded by an introductory piece which sets the excerpts in context.

Sophia N. Laiou, Tα οθωμανικά έγγραφα της μονής Bαρλαάμ Mετεώρων, 16ος-19ος αι. [Ottoman Documents of the Varlaam Monastery at Meteora, Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries] (Athens: Research Centre for Medieval and Modern Hellenism of the Academy of Athens, 2011), pp. 510, ISBN 978 960 404 170 1.

This volume contains summaries in Greek of 597 Ottoman documents which are kept at the Varlaam Monastery, Meteora, Thessaly, Greece. On pp. 31-76, Sophia N. Laiou provides an overview of the history of the monastery during the Ottoman period, with an emphasis on its tax regime and landed property, the economic strategy of the monks, their disputes with Ottoman officials, the Great Meteoron Monastery and the local population, as well as the expansion of çiftliks in western Thessaly in the eighteenth century; a summary in English is to be found on pp. 485-7. The book also includes a glossary of terms, an index of personal and place names, and facsimiles of 20 documents from the archive of the monastery.

Ahmet Özkılıç, Ali Coşkun, Abdullah Sivridağ (eds.), 401 Numaralı Şam Livası Mufassal Tahrir Defteri (942/1535), 2 vols. (Ankara: T.C Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, 2011), pp. 426 + 714. ISBN 978 975 19 5183 0 (both vols.), 978 975 19 5184 7 (vol. I), 978 975 19 5185 4 (vol. II).

These two volumes of the 1535mufassal tahrir defteri of the Şam livası, the first volume giving the transcription of the document, the second, a facsimile