Historiography, Ottoman - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
General Material Designation
[Article]
First Statement of Responsibility
Woodhead, Christine
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.
Leiden
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Brill
GENERAL NOTES
Text of Note
(7,401 words)
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
Historiography was the most popular genre of Ottoman prose. Three main developmental phases can be identified, corresponding roughly to Ottomanist historians' modern periodisation of Ottoman history. In the first phase, from about the beginning of the ninth/fifteenth century until the late tenth/sixteenth century, Ottoman historical writing developed from virtually nothing to become a major, court-centred, literary genre, benefitting from extensive sultanic patronage in a dynamic age when there was much achievement to celebrate and record. Although Turkish was always the principal historiographical language, some court histories from