Turkistan according to Kamusu'l-Alam, one of the sources of the Ottoman Period

During the Ottoman period, Kāmûsü'l-Aʻlâm, written by Şemseddin Sâmi, an Albanian author and one of the important writers of Turkish literature, with the encouragement and patronage of Sultan Abdulhamid II, is known as the first Turkish encyclopedia and serves as an important reference source for researchers with thousands of articles about world history and geography. The entire work, which reflects the knowledge status of the 19th century and the understanding of history among Ottoman intellectuals of the time, has not yet been translated into contemporary Turkish. During the period when Kāmûsü'l-Aʻlâm met its readers, it can be said that it was almost impossible to find a comprehensive Turkish source providing organized information about Turkestan, the ancestral land of the Turks, located in the heart of the world's largest continent, Asia, except for a few translated books by European travelers. Keywords: Kamusu'l-Alam, Şemseddin Sâmi, Turkestan, Turkestan scholars, Turkestan cities.