_ 252 _ The many archive documents that survive in isolation certainly have a great historical value, but it can never be the same as that of a genuine record office preserved in the form and order in which it was originally used. The states of medieval western Europe survived and developed into the states of modern Europe, and their archives, often still current, are preserved intact. The states of the medieval Near East, with one exception, were destroyed and passed away, and their archives, ceasing to serve any practical purpose, were dissipated and lost. That one exception is the Ottoman Empire, and until the spread of European influence and administrative methods it is the Ottoman records alone that have survived intact to the present day. Intact is perhaps too strong a word. The disturbances, wars, and revolutions of the last years of the Empire and the early years of the republic inevitably had their effect. Many sets of documents were lost or destroyed, others disarranged or damaged. But the millions of documents that remain constitute one of the most precious sources for Near Eastern history during the last five hundred years. For a long time the Ottoman archives, though known to exist, were not accessible to scholars, and even the history of Turkey itself was written by European and Turkish
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