This collective work coordinated by IRCICA covers the six hundred year-old history of the Ottoman state and civilisation from the formation of the Ottoman principality until the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Volume One comprises articles titled “From the Founding to Küçük Kaynarca”, “From Küçük Kaynarca to the Collapse”, “Ottoman State Organization”, “Administrative Organization during the Tanzimat Period”, “Ottoman Military Establishment”, “The Ottoman Legal System”, “Ottoman Society”, “The Structure of the Ottoman Economy”.
Volume Two includes articles titled “Ottoman Turkish”, “Turkish Literature in Anatolia”, “Turkish Literature during the Period of Westernization”, “An Exploration into Intellectual Life during the Period of Westernization”, “The Literature of Muslim Peoples in Europe during the Ottoman Period”, “Aspects of Intellectual Life in the Arab Provinces during the Ottoman Period”, “Ottoman Educational and Scholarly-Scientific Institutions”, “The Ottoman Scientific-Scholarly Literature”, “Art and Architecture”, “The Art of Calligraphy in the Ottoman Empire”, “The Art of Illumination in the Ottoman Empire”.
The book was published in several languages. The two volumes of the first edition in Turkish were published in 1994 and 1997. The Arabic and English editions were published during 1999-2002. The Bosnian edition was published as a large, single volume through the efforts of the Oriental Institute of Sarajevo, in 2005. It was translated into Russian and published in 2006 by Vastochnaya Literatura, the publishing house of the Russian Academy of Sciences The book was also translated and published in Persian, by the Encyclopedia Islamica Foundation, Iran, in 2008. Furthermore, an Albanian edition was published by the Albanian Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation with the cooperation of the Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency (TİKA), in 2009.
