Colonel Sadik Bey (el-Mueyyed) composed a travelogue, The Journey of an Ottoman Officer in the Great African Sahara (Bir Osmanli Zabitinin Afrika Sahra-yi Kebiri'nde Seyahati), based largely on his notes apparently taken en route, after completing his mission of conveying the presents of Sultan Abdulhamid II to the shaikh of the Sunusi order, Muhammed el-Mehdi el-Sunusi (1845-1902), resident in the sufi monastery in the town of Koufra (southeastern Libya today) in the year of 1895. The travelogue was published first in the popular scientific-literary journal Servet-i Funun in twenty seven parts in 1897-98 and also in 1898 as a book. My paper analyses the narrative content and the visual components of the travelogue as sources of the dynamics of Ottoman imperialism at the time of the "Scramble for Africa". Paying attention to the various portrayals of different groups of "locals", the author's use of ethnographic tropes, his ideas about the economic potential of the province, and the relative importance of the depiction of the Ottoman military presence there, the paper aims to point at the significance of the cultivation of an imperial metropole identity that these publications served among the Istanbulian reading public.