Vol. 12: Enverīzāde Saʿdullāh Enverī Efendi’s “Treatise on Austria” (Risāle-i Avusturya)

202 pages, paperback,
14,8 x 21,0 cm, 2022

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In 1835 a young, well-educated official from the imperial council (dīvān-i hümāyūn) in Istanbul by the name of Enverīzāde Saʿdullāh Enverī Efendi was sent to Vienna. There he served for a short time – perhaps not even one year – as the private secretary of the prominent statesman Ferik Ahmed Fethi Pasha, at that time the Ottoman ambassador in the capital of the Habsburg Empire.
Interested in reform and eager to learn as much as possible during his short time abroad, Enveri Efendi wrote a treatise in which he not only recorded geographical information but also numerous details concerning the state organization in Austria. This treatise is presented here in translation, along with an edition of the Ottoman Turkish text.

The Author

Gisela Procházka-Eisl is associate professor at the Institute of Near Eastern Studies of the University of Vienna. She received her Ph.D. degree in Turkish and Ottoman studies in 1992 and her venia docendi in Turcology and Islamic Studies in 2001. Most of her publications deal with Ottoman literature and cultural history. Her Ph.D. thesis, Die Wiener Handschrift des Sūrnāme-i Hümāyūn, was published in 1995, her habilitation Die Lieder des Papageien: Populäre Gedichte in der satirisch – literarischen Zeitschrift Papağan (1924–1927) in 2005. The scope of her research is reflected by the books that she has co-authored with her colleagues at the Institute of Near Estern Studies. Together with Claudia Römer she published a book on Osmanische Beamtenschreiben und Privatbriefe der Zeit Süleymāns des Prächtigen aus dem Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv zu Wien, with Stephan Procházka The Plain of Saints and Prophets The Nusayri-Alawi Community of Cilicia (Southern Turkey) and its Sacred Places, and with Hülya Çelik two volumes of  Texts on Popular Learning in Early Modern Ottoman Times, which is part of the “mecmua-project” that she conducted from 2011–2015 https://mecmua.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/.