Annals of the Turkish Empire, from 1591 to 1659

Transcriber's note: Errors and inconsistencies in accented words, mostly related to Arabic and Turkish names, have been taken care as much as possible, without attempting however to make a major revision and overhaul of the original text.
BY NAIMA. TRANSLATED FROM THE TURKISH, BY CHARLES FRASER.
LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE ORIENTAL TRANSLATION FUND OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. SOLD BY John Murray, Albemarle Street; and Parbury, Allen, & Co., Leadenhall Street. M.DCCC.XXXII.
LONDON: Printed by J. L. COX and SON, Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s-Inn Fields.

History, it has been well observed, is, of all other branches of human knowledge, the most attractive, and best rewards the efforts of research. Even the history of the most ignorant and barbarous nations that have ever peopled the globe, may furnish something, either in their modes of government, in their forms of religion, or in their manners, customs, and laws, which is calculated to amuse or instruct. The knowledge of the springs and motives of human actions, and of their consequent effects, whether auspicious or inauspicious, and which operate more or less powerfully on the destinies of the human race, is, by this channel, conveyed to our minds with a distinctness, perspicuity, and force which cannot, by any possibility, be gained in any other way.
By the investigation of history we become acquainted with points of character of the utmost importance, and arrive at the conviction that good and evil are, in some way or other, combined and interwoven in the affairs of life: and we may often, without difficulty, trace the happiness or misery of millions of human beings to the act of a single individual; and perceive that impressions have thereby been made that stamp, for ages, the moral and intellectual character of mankind.
Without adverting to the rise and downfall of the Roman Empire, out of the dismemberment of which have arisen the principal States of Europe, we would merely refer, at present, to the rise, progress, and establishment of Mohammedanism, the followers of which conquered, sword in hand, the whole of the rich and fertile provinces possessed by that empire in the East.