“The Great Turkes Defiance” Revisited

Abstract

Four decades after his monograph on the apocryphal correspondence of the Ottoman sultan was published, the author reviews the previous study of the subject, the origins of his book, its skeptical reception then, and the current acceptance of its main argument that most of the Russian versions of that correspondence are translations from Western European pamphlets and newspapers. Recent scholarship has located additional proof, and the current article presents further information which should help identify the sources for some of the Russian texts.