Memory and Book Sources in Cantemir’s History of the Ottoman Empire

The essential role of memory as a cognitive function in the historian's work is well known, a role more important until the achievement of modern research requirements. Dimitrie Cantemir’s writings are worthy of interest from the perspective of the presence of the two practices. It is what he can see from the work that contributed the most to the author's acceptance in the scholarly world of the eighteenth century: History of the Ottoman Empire. Two aspects hold our attention: 1. The role of memory in feeding historical writing, in the form of personal memories or taken from others; 2. The role of information taken from the writings, either as they were preserved in the depths of his memory, without the possibility of having had them at hand at the time of writing, or by quoting them directly at the time of writing. In this way, one could penetrate deeper into the workshop of the historical creation of the prince scholar at a stage when the historiography was at a crossroads, between traditional practices, under the empire of orality and memoirs, and the exigencies of the modern critical spirit, but also between the model of oriental and Ottoman historiography and that of European writings.