Work on the Early Ottoman Period and Qaramanlis

Abstract

Research on Libya during the first Ottoman and Qaramanli periods has been handicapped by the lack of a theme. Much work on these periods has been done to a large extent as spin-off from other research contingent on Libya, and new publications in European languages have been few. Their effect has been to cast a bright light on some corners of the subject, but the rest has been left in deep shadow. What follows is a summary of what has been done, together with some suggestions about where concerned research might be directed.A starting point for any research is bibliography. Bono (1982) provides a general guide to western sources on Libya which includes material on the period, while his earlier article (Bono 1979) concentrates on scarce published sources, some of which come from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.Another problem facing researchers is access to contemporary material. There is an immense quantity of consular material in archives in Britian, France and in particular Italy, some of which has been used. Individual longer accounts have been published as well, particularly of manuscript sources.Among the most interesting manuscripts are the longer, coherent accounts of people who stayed in Tripoli for extended periods. The journals of Thomas Baker, the English Consul in Tripoli between 1677 and 1685, fall into this category, and are discussed below. The guidebook written in 1767 by Anthony Knecht, British Vice-Consul, gives considerable information about the diplomatic, political and economic life of the city (Pennell 1982).Another way of dealing with these extensive sources is to write commentaries on them. In the first issue of Libyan Studies the works of James Bruce, the Scottish eighteenth century traveller, were discussed (Cumming 1970). This is also the approach adopted by ‘Imad al-Din Ghanim (1982), in his article in Arabic about an anonymous French account, translated into German in 1708 (Allerneuster Zustand der Afrikanischen Konigreiche Tripoli, Tunis and Algier, von einem gelehrten Jesuiten bey verricheter Skavelosung, Hamburg 1708).