[Footnote 41: I am ignorant whether the Turks have any
writers older than Mahomet II., nor can I reach beyond a
meagre chronicle (Annales Turcici ad Annum 1550) translated
by John Gaudier, and published by Leunclavius, (ad calcem
Laonic. Chalcond. p. 311 -350,) with copious pandects, or
commentaries. The history of the Growth and Decay (A.D.
1300 - 1683) of the Othman empire was translated into
English from the Latin Ms. of Demetrius Cantemir, prince of
Moldavia, (London, 1734, in folio.) The author is guilty of
strange blunders in Oriental history; but he was conversant
with the language, the annals, and institutions of the
Turks. Cantemir partly draws his materials from the Synopsis
of Saadi Effendi of Larissa, dedicated in the year 1696 to
Sultan Mustapha, and a valuable abridgment of the original
historians. In one of the Ramblers, Dr Johnson praises
Knolles (a General History of the Turks to the present Year.
London, 1603) as the first of historians, unhappy only in
the choice of his subject. Yet I much doubt whether a
partial and verbose compilation from Latin writers, thirteen
hundred folio pages of speeches and battles, can either
instruct or amuse an enlightened age, which requires from
criticism.the historian some tincture of philosophy and
Note: We could have wished that M. von Hammer had given a
more clear and distinct reply to this question of Gibbon.
In a note, vol. i. p. 630. M. von Hammer shows that they had
not only sheiks (religious writers) and learned lawyers, but
poets and authors on medicine. But the inquiry of Gibbon
obviously refers to historians. The oldest of their
historical works, of which V. Hammer makes use, is the
"Tarichi Aaschik Paschasade," i. e. the History of the Great
Grandson of Aaschik Pasha, who was a dervis and celebrated
ascetic poet in the reign of Murad (Amurath) I. Ahmed, the
author of the work, lived during the reign of Bajazet II.,
but, he says, derived much information from the book of
Scheik Jachshi, the son of Elias, who was Imaum to Sultan
Orchan, (the second Ottoman king) and who related, from the
lips of his father, the circumstances of the earliest
Ottoman history. This book (having searched for it in vain
for five-and-twenty years) our author found at length in the
Vatican. All the other Turkish histories on his list, as
indeed this, were written during the reign of Mahomet II.
It does not appear whether any of the rest cite earlier
authorities of equal value with that claimed by the "Tarichi
Aaschik Paschasade." - M. (in Quarterly Review, vol. xlix.
p. 292.)]