Picturesque representations of the dress and manners of the Turks

Beautiful color engravings of dress worn during the Ottoman Empire, with full descriptions of each plate and commentary on the lifestyle of a person wearing each example shown; this book is of interest to historians, to those studying the customs and manners of the Ottomans, and to researchers of textiles and cultural studies in general. Plates include Sultana or Odalisk, ladle-bearer, musician, first dragoman, the mufti, a Jew, a dervish, a Tartar, and so on. They are both entertaining, both to gaze at and to read about, and they bring alive the past of a radically different world from the present in a way that no dry historical tome or even a diverting historical novel can do alone.