Based on the theme of Turkish seafaring, the essays in this collection span a wide gamut of Ottoman navel and maritime history. The first three essays focus on famed Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis and his discoveries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Barbarossa brothers and their domination of northern Africa is this same general time period and the Ottoman naval policy in the Indian Ocean are explored. Relationships with the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf and the Ottoman conquest of Rhodes, Cyprus, and Crete provide insight into international relations. Essays on the Ottoman merchant marine and the varieties of ships utilized in Ottoman times portray in a direct way the maritime life of the Empire. Ottoman cartography and a medieval travelogue complete the collection. Complimenting the text, maps of the Ottoman maritime frontiers of 1512 and 1574 are included. Both historians of seafaring and of Ottoman studies will find these essays essential reading.

Svat Soucek studied at Charles University in Prague, Ecole Nationale des Langues Orientales in Paris, and Columbia University in New York. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan.