The Orientalist Karl Süssheim Meets the Young Turk Officer İsma’il Hakkı Bey: Two Unexplored Sources from the Last Decade in the Reign of the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II

Book info: The Orientalist Karl Süssheim Meets the Young Turk Officer İsma’il Hakkı Bey: Two Unexplored Sources from the Last Decade in the Reign of the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II (Hardcover, 572 pages) – Brill, 2018. Language: English.

The book consists of transcriptions and summary translations of two texts in, mostly, Ottoman Turkish, the first of which is the recently discovered second volume of the diary of the German orientalist Karl Süssheim, covering the years 1903-08 which he mostly spent in Istanbul. The second text is a printed memoir of a Young Turk officer called İsma’il Hakkı, in which the latter discusses his life, political engagement and the resulting problems. Süssheim met İsma’il Hakkı in Cairo in 1908 and kept in contact with him later. The texts offer a lively picture of Istanbul and Cairo in the early years of the 20th century, the repressive regime of Sultan Abdulhamid II and the heady days of the Young Turk revolution of July 1908. Editorial Reviews About the Author Jan Schmidt, Ph.D. (1992), Leiden University, is a retired lecturer in Turkish Studies. He wrote monographs and articles on Ottoman history and literature, and is the author of a four-volume catalogue of the Turkish manuscripts kept in Dutch libraries.