Reconstructing the ottoman greek world: Early modern ethnography in the household of martin crusius

Abstract

This article uses the life and writings of Martin Crusius (1526–1607), professor of Latin and Greek at the university of Tübingen, to explore the methods and tools of early modern ethnographers. For decades Crusius recorded contemporary Greek life under Ottoman rule by investigating a broad array of visual, material, textual, and oral evidence and by mustering various scholarly methods. The documentary record that Crusius compiled demonstrates that early modern ethnography was one among many period forms of knowledge making in which tropes and techniques from several fields and disciplines came together fruitfully.