Ottoman military activities on both the east and western borders of the empire brought new geographies and peoples under Ottoman administration throughout the sixteenth century. During this period, Ottoman ruling elites and intellectuals advocated or critiqued the imperial claims of the Ottoman dynasty for universal leadership. Among them were a group of travelers, historians, sea captains, poets, and astrologers who created a separate body of geographical literature in the sixteenth century. They systematized the production and diffusion of geographical works and relocated existing visual and textual knowledge according to a centralized vision of the state. In their works, the authors narrated and depicted the geographical, political and social features of the Ottoman realm and different parts of the world. In doing so, they reaffirmed the centrality of their Empire as well as emphasized the imperial future of its sultan as the "possessor" of this world. My analysis is primarily based on an early sixteenth-century Ottoman travel account focusing on China: Khitay-nameh (Book on China), prepared by Ali Ekber Hitayi in 1516. Through an examination of this travel account I delineate how the boundaries of the Ottoman world were conceived during the eve of the Ottoman conquest of Egypt by Selim I. A close examination of this travel account highlights Ottoman efforts to integrate the distant lands into the Ottoman geographical consciousness. I suggest that through depicting the geographies and peoples of far away regions of the world, Ottoman geographers attempted to consolidate Ottoman claims regarding their central position in the world as part of the imperial image-making enterprise.