Hiob Ludolf and Johann Michael Wansleben, pioneering orientalists, stood at the centre of the burgeoning study of Ethiopia in seventeenth-century Europe. This volume studies their remarkable lives and versatile work in their broader intellectual, political, and confessional contexts.

Hiob Ludolf (1624-1704) and Johann Michael Wansleben (1635-1679), the master and his erstwhile student could not be more different. Ludolf was a celebrated member of the Republic of Letters and the towering authority on Ethiopian studies. Wansleben, himself a brilliant scholar and, unlike Ludolf, a seasoned traveller in the Middle East, converted to Catholicism and eventually died impoverished and marginalized. Both stood at the centre of the burgeoning study of Ethiopia and spent a formative part of their career in middle sized Duchy of Saxe-Gotha which for several years played a pivotal role in Ethiopian-European encounters. This volume offers in-depth studies of the remarkable life and work of these two scholars in a broader intellectual, political, and confessional context.

Johann Michael Wansleben’s Travels in Turkey, 1673–1676 is a hitherto unpublished version of a remarkable description of Istanbul, Izmir, and Bursa by the German scholar traveller Wansleben.

Johann Michael Wansleben’s Travels in the Levant,1671-1674, is an account of the travels in Syria, Turkey and Egypt by one of the best known scholar-travellers of his day who collected manuscripts and antiquities and made some major archaeological discoveries.

Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 10 (CMR 10) is a history of everything that was written on relations in the period 1600-1700 in the Ottoman and Safavid empires. Its detailed entries contain descriptions, assessments and comprehensive bibliographical details about individual works.

Includes its Report, 1896-19 .