The authors present their findings in a visually stunning format while providing a comprehensive intellectual narrative that explains the artistic and cultural exchanges between the Ottoman Empire and Europe. The 443-page book includes 400 images 341 sources and devotes special sections to Textiles Tiles and Ceramics Flowers and Plants Carpets Arms and Armor Turkish Image Crescent and Commonalities.
The book explores the impressions of Ottoman material culture on Europe in the early modern age when the expansion of Ottoman territory created common borders and intensive political diplomatic and trade ties with Europe. The book's underlying research begins in 1453 with the conquest of Istanbul and encompasses the period ending with the Ottoman's last siege of Vienna and the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. Demonstrating that this period was marked with significant cultural transfers and translations between the Ottomans and European the book shows that often such cultural impressions acquired new meanings in European cultural life.