Broadside regarding Turkish soldiers' preparation for battle

Commentary

This account begins: 'A Description of the Turks Prayers and Fasts, before they go to war with the / CHRISTIANS'. The last sentence stops in the middle, suggesting that, unusually for a broadside, this sheet either has a second page or that the printing continues onto the back.

The Ottoman Empire, founded by the Mameluke Turks, dominated the politics and culture of the Near East for roughly four hundred years, between 1517 and 1917. Over this time the Ottoman territorial boundaries fluctuated, but there was a noticeable and sustained Ottoman presence in the Balkan area for this entire period. As a result, the Ottomans were in a constant, though not always widely-publicised, struggle with the Hapsburg Empire for control of this buffer-zone area. This makes it rather difficult to give this particular account a date or specific context.

Broadsides are single sheets of paper, printed on one side, to be read unfolded. They carried public information such as proclamations as well as ballads and news of the day. Cheaply available, they were sold on the streets by pedlars and chapmen. Broadsides offer a valuable insight into many aspects of the society they were published in, and the National Library of Scotland holds over 250,000 of them.

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