This course is intended to enable students to attain basic proficiency in reading handwritten primary sources. It assumes that the student has already been introduced to the main calligraphic styles and genres of Ottoman Turkish. We will spend most of our time on official documents, but we shall also be looking at prose narratives. The archival documents dimension will be organized according to the three main calligraphic styles of rika, divani and talik. By types of documents, this section will comprise late 19th century berats and fermans as well as muhimme and shariyya records. The narrative dimension will be familiarizing students with the structure (as well as the specific jargon) of prose texts while also enhancing their self-confidence about their ability to read an entire work in Ottoman Turkish (such as Kâtip Çelebi's Mizan al-hakk or others)