Clockwork Game: The Illustrious Career of a Chess-Playing Automaton

Von Kempelen must have been more informed about the Ottoman Empire than most of the Habsburg court, however, I find it likely that he was not only subject to the common prejudices of his era, but also willing to use his fellow courtiers’ odd combination of fear and fascination for his own benefit.

On von Kempelen’s monologue, my co-consultant Emrah Sahin comments that “von Kempelen relates the origins of Ottoman knowledge to one early period, I assume. Reference to Mongols would make sense in the context of the twelfth-century or earlier. Astronomers such as Ali Kushji, philosophers, poets, mathematicians, chemists, and other intellectuals continued to receive and give wonderful education, regardless of Mongols. In fact, a huge intellectual network existed until the nineteenth century in a vast cultural basin stretching from Anatolia through Iran and the Middle East into Turkestan. Mongols left their crushing impact upon the libraries, burning precious manuscripts, but Ottoman men of knowledge who had the means and skills stayed in business as usual. More evidently, it was along these lines: an inclusive education system that incorporated all young talents into the system lost its dynamism after an exclusive elite group emerged in the Ottoman urban centers, monopolizing knowledge and preventing outsiders, mainly poor young inquisitive minds from competing with their children in the highly hierarchical system that they themselves created to minimize mobility. Losing so much ground, I suppose, was of their making as much as of Mongols.”

I also found this article on the same subject rather useful.