95 - [ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ ΓΚΥΚΑΣ] Habesci Elias (pseudonym):Etat actuel de l Empire Ottoman, contenant des details plus exacts… sur la religion,le gouvernement,la milice,les moeurs…par Elias Habesci qui a reside plusieurs annees a Constantinople. Paris Lavillette, 1792

[ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ ΓΚΥΚΑΣ] Habesci Elias (pseudonym):Etat actuel de l Empire Ottoman, contenant des details plus exacts… sur la religion,le gouvernement,la milice,les moeurs…par Elias Habesci qui a reside plusieurs annees a Constantinople. Paris Lavillette, 1792 First edition in the original French (an English translation appeared a few years earlier) of one of the most comprehensive accounts of the Ottoman Levant. In 8vo. Complete in two volumes, modern leather. Text clean with only a few light spots on some pages. Overall very good. A very influential book for the rise of Philhellenism. It is certain that Habesci is a pseudonym, and modern research (Ref: Tobias Mörikez : Elias Habesci, 2019) revealed that the author was an educated Phanariot Greek in the service of Sultan Mustafa III, most probably Count Alexander Gykas. In the late 1780s he left for India and published two more books in Calcutta under the same pseudonym. He even appears in official diplomatic dispatches of the time as a very interesting Greek figure of the Greek Enlightenment. He stated that he had been encouraged to write about his experiences in the Ottoman Levant while visiting London in 1782 and that he had left his French manuscript with a former English consul. All internal evidence confirms that the account was written in the early 1780s by a Greek who was very well informed about the real condition of Ottoman administration and trade in the Levant. It is one of the best accounts of the Ottoman Empire written in the 18th century, by someone with detailed and accurate information on the administrative structure, religions, customs, military organization, peoples, and commercial conditions of the declining Ottoman state. It was also among the first works to highlight the enormous trade imbalance between the Ottoman Empire and Europe, with detailed data and descriptions of commerce, an imbalance that would ruin the Ottoman state in the 19th century. As one of the very few accounts written by a Greek and Ottoman subject, it is especially precious. References: Atabey 548, Blackmer 770 (English edition)