At the height of their power the Turks were nevertheless still a simple people. While western society has moved from complexity to greater complexity, their society has preserved an unembarrassed simplicity. They are loyal to state, religion, race, family, habit. Their religion is rigidly monotheistic; their government (up to July 24, 1908) has been the simplest possible monarchy, a personal despotism; they are probably the most unaffectedly democratic people in the world; a man is what his merit or his fortune has made him, with no regard to his ancestry; they are unitarian in religion, government and society. In morals the same simplicity prevails, with no torturing doubts and few sophistries. Much that seems like a fairy tale to us is simple unquestioning reality to them. In this simplicity, this single‐mindedness, they are totally different from the Arabs of the Khalifate, with whom they have been so much associated in Western minds, but with whom they have no relationship beyond that of a common religion. The Turks, I repeat, are a much simpler as well as a more warlike people than any other Oriental nation. The sources for the life of Ibrahim are classified naturally in three groups: (1st) The Turkish histories and biographies, first and second hand; (2nd) the accounts of European travelers and residents in Constantinople, such as Mouradjia D’Ohsson, Busbequius, and the Venetian baillies; and (3rd) the diplomatic correspondence and documents of the time as found in such collections as Charrière’s _Négociations_, Gévay’s _Urkunden und Actenstücke_, and Noradunghian’s and de Testa’s _Recueils_. A student would also wish to consult the histories written by foreigners, such as von Hammer, Zinkheisen and Jorga, whose sources are found in the three classes of evidence cited above.