This paper explores the authorial presence, and the construction of the audience as a public, in the Khaṭāynāmah, a description of China written in 1516 by `Ali Akbar Khaṭāyī, an otherwise unknown Transoxanian merchant, and dedicated to the Ottoman Emperor, Selim I. The Khaṭāynāmah was, until the late-16th century, the most substantial and comprehensive work on China in any West-Eurasian language, covering topics such as Chinese religions, methods of warfare, governance, agriculture, prisons, brothels and red-light districts, and celebration of the Chinese New Year. It was also framed by its author, and received by its Ottoman readers as a work on comparative politics. The book is a record of the abundant commercial and cultural contact between China and Central Asia that took place during the 15th century. By looking at how the author of the Khaṭāynāmah represents himself and his aims as a writer, and how he addresses his audience, we can gain some insight into the significance that these interactions held for people in Central Asia and the Middle East. I thus turn to an easily-overlooked feature of the Khaṭāynāmah, the many citations of poetry that appear throughout the book, including lengthy citations from Maḥmūd-i Shabistarī (mostly from a work erroneously or disingenuously attributed to him--the Kanz al-Ḥaqā'iq, written by the “wrestler-saint,” Pahlavān Maḥmūd Pūryā-yi Valī) and from `Aṭṭār. It is especially through these citations that the personality, attitudes, and intellectual influences of the author are made visible to readers. Lengthy verse citations are used at key points in the text, including the invocation and preface, in a way that identifies the goals and significance of the Khaṭāynāmah with those of its Sufistic intertexts, using these intertexts to construct the author's authority and to frame the description of China. Another group of verse citations appears to be taken from inscriptions on the ruins of Persepolis, while other verses are the author's own compositions. Along with statements in the text that explicitly compare attitudes or practices of the Chinese to those of Muslims, the verse citations portray the author as a representative urban, Muslim, Ottoman subject. By identifying the author's project with the Kanz al-Ḥaqā'iq, a text associated with futuvvat, and referring to Ottoman political questions, these verse citations and statements address the readers as a public, collectively capable and responsible with regard to the fate of their community.