Halil İnalcık: My Method

Halil İnalcık (1916)

A historian should know economic, cultural and political as well as general history. At the same time a historian should also know languages and the law. He must be able to use the primary sources. For this he must patiently study the difficult texts to be read. He must train himself in dept...
I like to go and see the areas whose place names appear in the sources. I have been traveling for twenty years. I do topographical research. If I can go and find any place name at all that appears in a suorce, then that narrative acquires far more value and immediacy. That is my method...