This book offers the first study, transliteration,
and English translation of a little-known
manuscript held in the Biblioteca Riccardiana
in Florence (Ricc. 198): a manual for teaching
Turkish, composed in 1667 by ‘Abdullāh, a
captive of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Written
aboard a ship bound for Livorno by a man
who feared for his life and worked entirely
from memory, the manuscript is unusual
among the surviving materials for teaching
Turkish in early modern Europe, most of which
were produced by European learners or by
captive copyists reproducing existing texts.
‘Abdullāh, by contrast, composed his own
text, and in doing so left behind not only a
language-teaching manual but also a rare
first-person trace of Mediterranean captivity.
Alongside the dialogues, fables, proverbs, and
poems he set down, the manuscript preserves
moments in which ‘Abdullāh speaks of his own
condition, his fears, and his longing for home.
Misidentified in the eighteenth century as a
collection of Islamic prayers, it is examined
here for the first time. Situating the manuscript
within the wider history of teaching Turkish as
a foreign language, this book brings to light
both an unusual document and the voice of an
otherwise ordinary man.
