Halil İnalcık

Halil İnalcık (b. 7th of September 1916, İstanbul), Turkish Historian

İnalcık is originally a Crimean Tatar. He completed the normal school in Balıkesir. In 1935 he began his higher education in the Department of New Age History in the Faculty of Language, History and Language of Ankara University. After teaching courses on Ottoman and European history he was invited to the University of Chicago Department of History as “University Professor of Ottoman History”. His book The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600 was published in 1973. He received honorary doctorates from various universities in Turkey and around the world. In 1993 he was invited to Bilkent University and he established the Department of History there. He still teaches seminar courses to graduate students in Bilkent University. İnalcık speaks very good Ottoman Turkish; he is proficient in English, French and German; he also speaks good Arabic, Persian and Italian. İnalcık, who has received honorary doctorates from various universities around the world, was designated towards the end of the 20th century as one of the 2000 important social science figures in their respective fields by the International Center for Biography of Cambridge.

Tarihçilerin Kutbu Halil İnalcık consists of interviews in which İnalcık talks about his life and his career as a historian. The book was published by Türkiye İş Bankası Yayınları in 2005.