Franz Babinger | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1891-01-15)January 15, 1891 |
| Died | June 23, 1967(1967-06-23) (aged 76) |
| Academic work | |
| Notable works | Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time |
Franz Babinger (15 January 1891 – 23 June 1967) was a German orientalist and historian of theOttoman Empire, best known for hisbiography of theOttomansultanMehmed II, known as "the Conqueror", originally published asMehmed der Eroberer und seine Zeit. An English translation byRalph Manheim is available from thePrinceton University Press, under the titleMehmed the Conqueror and His Time.
Babinger was born inWeiden in der Oberpfalz,Bavaria, as the eldest of four children into a middle-class family.[1] His father was a Roman Catholic, his mother was a Protestant and maternal grandmother of Jewish background.[1] He was already an accomplished academic and linguist by the time he had completed his secondary school studies. Prior to startingUniversity, he had already learned bothPersian andHebrew.[1]
Babinger completed his doctoral studies at theUniversity of Munich on the eve of theFirst World War; after the war started, he joined theGerman Army. Because of his language skills and abilities, Babinger served in theMiddle East, mostly as a liaison-officer, using his experiences to report and research.[1]
After the war, Babinger continued his studies atFriedrich-Wilhelms Universität inBerlin where he completed hisHabilitationsschrift in 1921 and became aprofessor at the same institution. During this period, he publishedGeschichtsschreiber der Osmanen und ihre Werke ("Historians of the Ottoman Empire").[1] The work became the standard bibliographical review of Ottoman historiography and confirmed the reputation of Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität as a leading center for Near East studies. The rise of theNazis to power in 1933 forced him to resign his position. However, theRomanian statesman, academic and polymathNicolae Iorga, himself a widely respected historian of the Ottoman Empire, invited Babinger to take up a position inBucharest, which he held until he was ordered out of the country in 1943.[1]
Babinger resumed his teaching career after theSecond World War at theUniversity of Munich in 1948 until his retirement in 1958. In 1957, he testified about German atrocities against RomanianJews. He was elected a member of theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1964.[2] He continued to work and publish actively until his death inAlbania on 23 June 1967, the circumstances of which are unclear.[3]
In addition to his bibliographical work, Babinger published numerous articles and books on a wide variety of subjects. Babinger knewTurkish,Romanian andArabic as well as the principal European languages,[3] giving his work a scope and authority that had hitherto rarely been displayed in Near Eastern studies.
As a result of his reputation, his magnum opusMehmed the Conqueror was published without any accompanyingnotes onsource material at all, since the companion volume outlining his extensive and voluminous sources was unfinished at the time of his death. As a result,Mehmed the Conqueror is one of the few academic works available with no cited sources and whose authority rests solely on the reputation of the author's research abilities. Prof.Halil Inalcik from the University of Ankara criticizes Babinger's overlook of Ottoman sources.[4]
