An Austrian orientalist and diplomat, and one of the founders of Ottoman studies in Europe. Trained at Vienna’s Oriental Academy, he served as an interpreter in Constantinople before settling in Vienna, where he wrote The History of the Assassins (1818) and a ten-volume history of the Ottoman Empire (1827–35). His translation of the Díván of Hafiz (1812–13) inspired Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan, and he was the first president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
