[ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ ΓΚΥΚΑΣ ] Habesci Elias (pseudonym): The Present State of the Ottoman Empire containing a more accurate and interesting account of …. Elias Habesci many years resident at Constantinople in the service of the Grand Signor. London 1784 First edition of one of the most comprehensive account on the Ottoman Levant. In 8vo, complete 413p.,, modern leather over boards, text with few spotting and scattered foxing in some pages, overall in very good condition. It is certain that Habesci is a pseudonym,and modern research (Ref: Tobias Morike: Elias Habesci, 2019) revealed that the author was an educated Fanariot Greek,in the service of the Sultan Mustafa III, most probably count Alexander Gykas.In the late 1780s left for India and had published in Calcutta two more books under the same pseudonym,we can located him even in the official diplomatic dispatches of the time,certainly a very interesting Greek during the Greek Enlightenment time.He states that he had been encouraged to write about his experiences for the Ottoman Levant while visiting London in 1782 et that he had left his French manuscript with a former English consul,all internal information confirm that the account was written in the early 1780s by a Greek who was very well informed about the real condition of the Ottoman administration and the trade in the Levant.It is one of the best account for the Ottoman empire written in 18th century, from someone who had detailed and accurate information on the administrative structure,religions,customs,military organization, peoples and commercial conditions of the declined Ottoman state. It was one of the first studies to point out a huge trade imbalance between Ottoman Empire and Europe, with detailed data and descriptions of commerce, something that will ruin the Ottoman state in the 19th century.It is also one of the very few accounts written by a Greek Ottoman subject, for this reason is very precious.Atabey 548 (French edition), Blackmer 770.