Ottoman manuscript on fruits and crops

[Ottoman agriculture]. [A treatise on agriculture].

€ 2,800.00

An Ottoman agricultural manuscript in a clear, tidy script. The author discusses a range of crops and related information, including a chapter on the cultivation of olives and another on the cultivation of guavas. Readers are thus provided with an interesting glimpse into the history of food cultivation in the Ottoman Empire, as well as Ottoman interest in foreign foods and agriculture. Guavas, for example, were only introduced to the Ottoman world through the Columbian exchange in the early 16th century, but in the following centuries came to be cultivated in some lowland areas of the Ottoman Empire, where the climate was neither too cold nor too arid. Meanwhile, olives and other staples had been part of Ottoman agriculture since antiquity.

Some light exterior wear, faint waterstaining, altogether well-preserved. Provenance: 20th century Parisian private collection, kept in the family for several generations and dispersed in 2022.