Paul Rycaut’s The Present State of the Ottoman Empire is the first comprehensive description of the Ottoman Empire written in English by an author who reported firsthand. The first edition of 1666 was reprinted several times and translated into French, Dutch, Italian, Polish, Spanish, German and Russian. The present article provides information on the genesis, the structure and the sources of the English original as well as on the various translations and their interrelationship (the Spanish version was completely unknown until now, since the translator concealed the real authorship). On the basis of selected examples, the special interest of the work for the historical study of Turkish borrowings in European languages is illustrated.
