This paper examines the celebrated Ottoman author Fatma Aliye Han?m and her influential essay, The Women of Islam (Nisvan-? Islam, 1892). Fatma Aliye’s nominal reason for writing it was to correct misconceptions about Ottoman women’s lives that she had found to be commonly held among even educated European visitors to the Ottoman Empire. The so-called “Woman Question” was a topic at the top of commentators’ agenda both in Europe and the Middle East at the time. Fatma Aliye addressed many current and vexed issues, speaking to matters such as slavery, especially female slavery, in the Ottoman Empire as compared to the treatment of servants in Europe; marriage, polygyny, and divorce and the question of what Islam does or does not mandate in this matter; and fashion and women’s sartorial choices in various social contexts and across time. Yet, as topical as the essay was for European readers, it was written in Ottoman Turkish and in that sense it was obviously addressed to an Ottoman, rather than European, audience. The essay was an instant success and was translated into Arabic and French almost immediately (with further additional translations into both languages later on). We will examine The Women of Islam in the context of both actual translation—i.e., its various French and Arabic editions—and as a form of cultural translation. In the second capacity The Women of Islam has at least three aspects: It explains to European women how “properly” to see Muslim women; it admonishes Muslim women how “properly” to present themselves to European visitors; and it quickly assumed importance as a fundamental document for Muslim women on how to embody a modernist Islam. In this latter sense it contributed to the establishment of Fatma Aliye as an “exemplary women” often invoked in compilations in Muslim contexts focusing on notable and accomplished women.