Unter dem Halbmond

The later Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth Count Moltke (1800-1891) was assigned as a military advisor to Istanbul at the court of the Ottoman ruler Mahmud II in 1836. In the following three years, he gained many direct insights into the lives of the Turks, Armenians, Greeks, and Kurds of that time. He traveled through eastern Turkey to Syria and participated in a campaign against the Kurds as well as the Battle of Nisib against the Egyptians. He documented his adventurous experiences in a total of 63 letters, which are still very readable today. Fans of Karl May's novels will recognize many parallels to his famous Oriental cycle in this historical account. This is a paperback edition, containing the complete text of the original 1891 publication (Collected Writings and Memoirs of Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke, Volume 8: Letters on Conditions and Events in Turkey from 1835 to 1839).