Ahmed Cevdet Pasha is a distinguished figure among the scholars raised both in the Turkish-Islamic world of his time and within the Ottoman Empire, in terms of his historiography, legal expertise, statesmanship, and polymathy, with the works he left behind serving as the best example of this.

This work by Cevdet Pasha, which we present to our readers under the title History of Crimea and the Caucasus, is a product of his historiography, statesmanship, and scholarship; the initial seed of the book was sown before the 1856 Paris Conference, when British Ambassador Lord Stratford Canning requested, through the mediation of Mustafa Reşid Pasha, that he write a treatise describing the state of the Caucasus. Since Cevdet Pasha was—in the words of Tanpınar—"one of those who, from the moment they dip their pen into the ink, believe themselves to be bound to that task until death," he worked to complete this treatise by expanding it over time from its initial concise state into a more detailed one, eventually giving rise to this book.

The work consists of two parts: first, the history of the Crimean Khanate and the biographies of certain Crimean Khans are explained and examined; subsequently, the geography of the Caucasus is outlined, and its history is conveyed in a concise manner up to the Pasha's own time.

Ultimately, reading about Crimea and the Caucasus, which occupy extraordinarily strategic positions in terms of both Ottoman and Islamic history, through the lens of Ahmed Cevdet Pasha—who possessed a pen as powerful as his scholarship—makes this book all the more significant.