It is often asserted that, before the eighteenth century, the Ottomans practiced a ‘unilateral’ style of diplomacy in their dealings with European states; that they only dispatched ‘ad hoc envoys’ to settle specific practical issues; and that Yirmisekiz Mehmed Çelebi, who led an embassy to France led in 1720 was ‘the first Ottoman ambassador to the West’. Yirmisekiz looms large in the literature because he left an extensive account of his embassy, with several observations on French society; this account established a new genre of Ottoman writing – the sefaretname, or ‘embassy book’. Earlier Ottoman envoys to Europe did not leave such written accounts and therefore it is no accident that their missions remain undocumented and unappreciated. In order to address this problem, this paper offers a blueprint on how to tell the story of an Ottoman mission to Europe in the absence of a sefaretname. Among the several diplomatic missions that the Ottomans dispatched in the seventeenth century, the delegation that visited Paris, London, and the Dutch Republic in 1618-1619 under the leadership of chiaus Hussein stands out in terms of the total mileage it covered. It also happens that it can be reconstructed with surprising detail by combining materials from the Dutch, French, and English archives, as well as a few printed publications. Hussein's delegation was tasked with informing European potentates that their treaties with the Ottomans would remain valid during the reign of the new sultan, Osman II (1618-1622). The purpose of this mission was not just ceremonial: its aim was to sustain the ‘culture of presence’ valued by both parties. In fact, this paper argues that, reading against the grain, it is possible to see the Ottoman delegation engage in a shared, but also contested idiom of diplomatic practices ranging from gift-giving, audience protocol and settling issues of precedence, to the liberation of slaves. By accessing the actual practices employed in each case it is possible to write a more integrated history (and to establish a more complex genealogy) of European-Ottoman diplomacy.