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Specialist Notes
The book is a review of Ottoman studies in the fields of grammar, poetry, logic, mathematics, geometry, optics, music, medicine, herbal alchemy, of chemistry, history, politics, geography and devotion, interspersed with translations prepared by the Venetian dragoman Gianrinaldo Carli (who also translated Katib Çelebi into Italian) and by other dragoman apprentices. The book concludes with an exhortation to translate more books from Turkish, Persian and Arabic. The nominal author, Giovanni Battista Donà, had been a Venetian bailo (resident consul) in Istanbul from 1680 to 1684, but the book is the fruit of an extensive collection and translation project undertaken by a group of young dragoman apprentices working under Donà in the Venetian embassy in Istanbul. The German philosopher Leibniz, passing through Venice in 1690, observed that On Literature was the only "new" title he had discovered there.