About the cover illustration

The illustration on the cover of Xamarin in Action bears the caption “Bostandji bachi.” The literal translation is “chief gardener,” but the Bostandjis of the Turkish sultan had powers and responsibilities ranging far beyond the sultan’s gardens to his palaces and supervising the police of the capital. The illustration is taken from a collection of costumes of the Ottoman Empire published on January 1, 1802, by William Miller of Old Bond Street, London. The title page is missing from the collection, and we’ve so far been unable to track it down. The book’s table of contents identifies the figures in both English and French, and each illustration also bears the names of two artists who worked on it, both of whom would no doubt be surprised to find their art gracing the front cover of a computer programming book 200 years later.