Acknowledgements
This book is dedicated to those I left behind. To those who actively or passively sorrowed in silence and anonymity for the author of these lines to fulfil the dreams of this world. Small sweet dreams indeed, if we look closely. Whether it was worth all this effort, only the reader will decide.
I, Adrian Gheorghe (alu’ Rariu), born in the oldest parts of Wallachia under the foothills of the Carpathians, had to leave my village of Gliganu de Jos and its whole universe full of naivety at the age of 14. Since then, I have not returned to stay, only to perform brief rituals. The distance has become even longer: first, university in Bucharest, and shortly afterwards I left my own country. The career and all the dreams I have realised had to be paid for with the torment of uprooting, of brutally tearing up the vital sphere, and the impossibility of opposing such energies.
This book is dedicated to those who enlightened my childhood: my great- grandparents, with their stories from other worlds; my dearest grandparents, who raised and educated me as their own child; nea Mișu, the Second World War veteran; my best friend with whom I spent many hours fishing without catching a fish; and the other children of the village with whom I used to play football in the summer, barefoot on the village’s pasture or on the frozen lake in winter. They first and foremost made me who I am now; they all created my Weltanschauung.
Three wonderful daughters, Ana, Maria and Anca, had to grow up having a pro forma father barricaded in his office and completely cut off from the outside world. This book was written on their shoulders. Every hour that these children (and their mother, Corina) were not enjoying my presence added a few more lines to this book. My wife is to be thanked for reading my scientific texts with much attention and patience and sharing her critiques.
Many people shaped me intellectually. The best parts of this book are indebted to them alone. I begin with the circle of talented friends and colleagues at the Faculty of History of the University of Bucharest, first of all Dr. Ginel Lazăr and Dr. Alexandru Ștefan Anca, and I end with the one who initiated me into Ottoman Studies, the late, probably the last great Romanian Ottomanist, Prof. Mihai Maxim. A special place is occupied by my good friend and colleague Dr. Albert Weber, with whom I work daily on the biggest and dearest project of our lives, Corpus Draculianum.
Germany has given me the immense honour and privilege of collaborating and above all learning from outstanding specialists. From a long list, I mention those who have left the deepest impact on me: from the University of Münster, Prof. Alexandru Cizek, a specialist of the Middle Ages, and Prof. Sven (Muhammad) Kalisch, dare I say a true genius in Islamic theology, law, and philosophy.
One of my greatest dreams was to follow in Franz Babinger’s footsteps and do my PhD in the institute he founded after his return from Romania. Here, I had the tremendous fortune and privilege to be one of the last students of Prof. Hans Georg Majer, certainly the last great representative of the old German school of Ottoman Studies, a devoted palaeographer and expert in the Ottoman chancellery. Another fulfilled part of these dreams was the privilege of working under the coordination of Prof. Suraya Faroqhi and Prof. Christoph K. Neumann, outstanding personalities and brilliant specialists in their fields. If I had not had the fortune to fall into this sublime triangle my PhD would not have been marked summa cum laude, nor would I have successfully completed a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft-funded post-doc at the same institute.
Nevertheless, this book is also a tribute to Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr and her decades-long work, which has brought the most important contributions in this field. Our long discussions in the library of the Institute of Near and Middle Eastern Studies in Munich and her gracious advice and warm encouragement were a continuous source of inspiration and motivation.
The present book is built on the results of all this research over the past decade. It is at the same time a synthesis, with some essayistic accents, that attempts to create a new perspective and hopefully a new current of thought and research paradigms in early Ottoman and medieval East European history.
From Munich before Christmas in a sad year marked by pandemics and so much suffering,
Anno Domini 2021