The editor is suggested to have been Eberhard Werner Happel, an active editor and miscellaneous writer of the period, best known for his "Thesaurus exoticorum".
The more than 130 large woodcuts was by Melchior Lorck, the Danish draughtsman who only recently was hailed as "one of the sixteenth century's most original artists". The illustrations fall into groups: first come those of people and things, consisting of pictures of natives of different parts of the Turkish empire, different grades of person and trades, with a few plates of horses or things (no.87 a Tartar covered wagon; no.92 reproductions of Turkish coins); then comes a group of views of towns, Damascus, Smyrna (9398), portraits of lady sultans (99-104), followed by some more individual types (including a dervish), then views of the great mosques of Constantinople (113-122), then more pictures of animals (horses, including an Arab horse, camels), individuals and things (Turkish standards) (123136), and last the double-page woodcut entitled "Das Turkische Kirchen-Gemahlde", which contains images of the famous mosques etc. of Islam, including that at Mecca.

The accompanying text for each image describes it in some detail, and is printed across the page. It is followed (printed in a smaller type and in 2 columns) by contemporary news dated from 2 September to 24 December [1684]. The preface stresses the trouble gone to present accurate texts, based on the best authors, and illustrations also of verisimilitude, mentions the work of Tavernier, and offers to the reader not only a survey of the empire but also an account of the wars against the Turks so that "der Leser hoffentlich [an early use of 'hopefully'?] einen guten Bericht von der Turckey und diesem jetzigen Kriege erlangen wird welches der einzige Zweck dieser Beschreibung gewesen ist".