The Dragoman Renaissance Research Platform facilitates interaction with research materials through a variety of perspectives and entry points. You may search for specific items or sets of items, or click on one of the collections below to browse it. New collections will be added in the near future.
Current collections include:
Table of Figures: metadata and digital surrogates for 57 figures analyzed in The Dragoman Renaissance, including dragomans' portraits, miniature albums, oil paintings, genealogical charts, manuscript codices, and five customized and interactive data visualizations exploring dragomans' kinship and marriage patterns
Ottoman Dictionaries and Grammars: A database containing bibliographic and analytical data about 84 bi- and multi-lingual Ottoman dictionaries and grammars in Latinate languages in the period up to 1730CE
Subject bibliographies:
Ottoman Dictionaries and Grammars in Latinate Languages: Citations for the 84 works in the database above
Ottoman Dictionaries and Grammars - Secondary Literature: Citations for over 90 works of scholarship about early modern Ottoman dictionaries and grammars in Latinate languages
Dragomans' Writings and Translations: Citations for 55 works authored, compiled, or translated by early modern dragomans
Venetian Representatives to the Porte: A database of Venetian ambassadors' and consuls' writings from Istanbul from the early sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries (many of which remain in manuscript in the Venetian archives), based on an index prepared by the late Prof. Maria Pia Pedani
Archival objects: Digital surrogates of 11 fascicles (totaling over 2000 pages) of copies of Ottoman official records with contemporaneous facing translation into Italian, collated, bound, and archived in the house of the Venetian representative in Istanbul starting ca. 1590, and now preserved in the Venetian State Archives in the fondo Bailo a Costantinopoli, Carte Turche. Due to copyright restrictions, access is limited to members of the dragoman research group.
In the near future, the following collections will be made available:
Dragoman Person Records: A bio-bibliographical database of 116 dragomans who worked with Venetian diplomats in Istanbul and with Ottoman merchants and dignitaries in Venice in the period 1550-1700, as well as extended information about their kin. This evolving database will allow researchers to trace dragomans' life trajectories and kinship, financial, and professional ties, as well as their translations and other textual and visual output (in both manuscript and print) in a variety of genres, including dragomans’ wills, portraits, and commissioned works.
Carte turche, Ottoman Records: summaries, structured data (sender, receiver, date, genre, placenames, persons and magistracies mentioned) and partial transcriptions of approx. 1300 copies of Ottoman chancery records from the period 1589-1670 collated by the Venetian bailate chancery in Istanbul and now kept in the Venetian State Archives.
Carte turche, Italian Records: transcriptions and structured data of contemporaneous Italian translations (mostly signed by the individual dragomans responsible for them) of the Ottoman records above
In phase II, this platform will also provide access to:
Ottoman Prime Minister’s Archive, Ecnebi Defteri, registers 13-18: English summaries, partial transcriptions, and structured data for approximately 500 records in Ottoman Turkish concerning Venetian activities in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1605-c. 1680
Zadar State Archives (Croatia), Dragomans Fondo: English summaries and structured data for approximately 150 records in Serbo-Croatian of documents in Italian and Ottoman Turkish collated and translated by Venetian dragomans, c. 1621-1680
School of Oriental and African Studies, London, Paget Papers, boxes 52-53: summaries and structured data for 60 letters sent by Venetian dragomans Giacomo and Tommaso Tarsia to English Ambassador Extraordinary to the Porte Lord Paget, 1694-1699
Koper Municipal Archives (Slovenia), Tarsia Family Archives, KP 312: English summaries, partial transcriptions, and structured data for dozens of copies of archival records related to the Tarsia family, whose members served as Venetian dragomans in Istanbul in the seventeenth century
Dozens of records from various series and fonds in the Venetian State Archives related to dragomans' professional, familial, and economic activities
A set of annotated glossaries for Ottoman and Venetian official genres, magistracies, place names, and more