Acceso usuarios
Wolfgang Schweickard
Pierre-Ignace Chavatte did not write his chronicle of the city of Lille (Chronique memorial, 1657–1693) exclusively in his own words and based on his personal experience. Instead, he incorporated rather frequently second-hand information (taken especially from historical pamphlets) on events that took place in other regions of Europe. This also applies to aspects of the Christian-Ottoman antagonism in the 17th century. As a consequence the Chronique contains a number of lexical elements of Turkish origin, which are of particular interest from the point of view of historical language contact. As a rule the historical sources used by Chavatte cannot be identified with precision. However, precise identification is possible in the case of the Relation exacte des vaines Prieres & Jûnes, ordonnés par le Grand Seigneur, dans tout l’Empire ottoman, which extends over two folio pages in the original manuscript. This passage is based on a printed French original dating from 1686, which was translated from Italian. The Italian version in turn insinuates that the whole text is ultimately based on a Turkish original. Significant historical inconsistencies, however, clearly prove that the Relation was, in actual fact, part of the Christian anti-Muslim propaganda.
