Turkish studies barely existed in Europe before the twentieth century
Evidence
Neither ancient fears nor a new predatory interest in the Near East had translated into any substantial interest in the language or culture of the Turks. Knolles, the author of a General History of the Turks, quoted at the start of this chapter, knew no Turkish. There was no chair in Turkish studies in any European university in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nor was there any interest in translating Turkish literature. There was nothing that could be called a tradition of Turkish studies in Britain or France until the twentieth century. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 193
Related
- Practical linguists and learned elites never overlapped in studying the Ottoman world (similarity 0.81)
- Turkish scholars studied ancient but neglected modern Turks abroad as émigrés. (similarity 0.81)
- Pre-1800 European loanwords in Turkish were few and mostly Italian maritime terms. (similarity 0.79)
- Erpenius used Turkish dictionaries to improve Arabic scholarship, though Europeans scorned Turkish itself (similarity 0.79)
- Western study of Islamic texts long ignored living Muslims and their culture (similarity 0.79)
- Ottoman interest in Europe only began once Europe seemed dangerous (similarity 0.79)
- Ottoman advances drove European study of Islam through fear (similarity 0.79)
- European Turcology scholars reconstructed the pre-Islamic Turkish past (similarity 0.78)