Early Ottoman history has recently been out of fashion and, with it, the close textual study of early Ottoman chronicles. It is heartening, therefore, to find a scholar ready to take forward a tradition initiated by Friedrich Giese and Paul Wittek in the 1920s, and continued, especially, by V.L. Ménage. Ménage was the first to signal the importance of the “Oxford Anonymous Chronicle” (OA) of c. 1485, which had previously been mistakenly attributed to the chronicler Ruhi, and to realize its importance as a source for the chronicle of Neşri which was to form the basis of Ottoman literary historiography. Until now, however, the lack of an edition or translation of the work has been a source of frustration for any Ottomanist or Byzantinist interested in the rise of the Ottomans.

That said, the Oxford Anonymous is not an easy text. It is a composite work stitched together – not always expertly – from a variety of earlier and often disparate texts, some of them already familiar from other fifteenth-century sources. For example, the tale of how Orhan's son Süleyman Paşa crossed the Dardanelles on a raft with 40 warriors (pp. 70–1) is found also in Şükrullah's chapter on the Ottomans in his Persian universal history, composed in the 1460s. In complete contrast to this legendary episode, the laconic notes giving dates for Ottoman conquests between 1364 and 1386 are quite clearly extracted directly from the “Chronological lists” discussed by Ménage (see especially “The ‘Annals of Murād II’”, BSOAS 39, 1976). In the final section, on the early years of Bayezid II's reign, Kastritsis observes that the material on the conquests of Kilia and Akkirman in 1483–84 appears to be taken from a campaign diary, evidently of the type that Feridun Bey was later to preserve in his Münşe’ātü’s-Selātīn. However, not all OA's sources can be identified. The material on Murad II's reign, for example, seems to come largely from an otherwise unknown chronicler, whom Kastritsis pinpoints as being resident in Edirne, as he uses the phrase “here in Edirne”. I would support this view by noting that in his account of Murad II's crossing the Bosphorus in 1444, this author, as a resident of Edirne, displays his ignorance of the geography of the Istanbul area.

Since the OA shares much of its material with other often identifiable sources, the question arises as to whether it has any value as a source for the student of the events of Ottoman history rather than simply for a student of Ottoman historiography. The answer is that, to a limited extent, it does. We may, for example, compare OA's treatment of the incident where the Janissaries demand that Mehmed II grant them an accession bonus at the end of his first campaign in 1451, with the report of the same event in Tursun Bey's History, composed only a couple of years after OA. In Tursun's account, Mehmed flogged the Janissary officers and refused to pay the bonus, evidently intending his story to act as an instructive tale showing sultans how to treat their unruly soldiery. OA, on the other hand, while still making Mehmed flog the officers, reports that the Janissaries nonetheless received their bonus. In this case, I would tend to believe OA. Kastritis also signals OA's account of Murad II's struggles against his uncle “the false” Mustafa in 1421–22 as a primary source for these events, providing as it does a very circumstantial account of Murad II's crossing of the Dardanelles in pursuit of his uncle, and some eye-catching details, notably Mustafa's displaying the wounds that he received at the battle of Ankara as proof of his identity. However, the most important section in OA is the long chapter on the civil war of 1402–13 between the sons of Bayezid I. This is an epic account of the struggle between the princes composed by an anonymous follower of Prince Mehmed, which Neşri was to copy almost verbatim into his own History, and which Kastritsis was to use in his study of the civil war (The Sons of Bayezid, Leiden, 2007). For the modern historian the value of this section, which occupies about a third of the manuscript, is as a unique source for the civil war. This does, however, leave the problem of why the compiler of OA should devote to it such a disproportionate amount of space. In answer to the question, Kastritsis makes the very plausible suggestion that it reflects the circumstances of the chronicle's dedicatee. OA was one of a number of Ottoman histories composed for the sultan Bayezid II (1481–1512) who, at the date of its composition, was still facing the possibility of a war with his brother Prince Cem. The chapter on the civil war ends with the final triumph of Prince Mehmed over his brothers and might well, therefore, have been included as an encouragement to Bayezid in the face of his own brother's challenge.

The complexities of the text mean that a modern historian must use the OA with care. Dr Kastritsis has, however, smoothed the reader's path, first – and most obviously – by providing a fluent translation, and second by providing an introduction and notes which illuminate but never overburden the translation. Finally, we should thank Liverpool University Press for undertaking to publish the book. Not so long ago, no publisher would even contemplate taking on an Ottoman text.