An Ottoman army led by Sultan Selim I entered Damascus in triumph in the year 1516. Not long after, in Ramadan of the hijri year 936 (AD 1530) a member of the Damascene elite and scholar named Badruddin al-Ghazzi set off for the Turkish-speaking lands of the Ottoman Empire, embarking on his own quest for cultural and intellectual conquest. Ghazzi visited several towns and cities in Anatolia before reaching his ultimate destination, Istanbul, or as he repeatedly called it, al-Qustantiniyya al-Uzma (great/much exalted Constantinople). His travelogue, written in the saj‘ style of rhymed prose, represents one of the earliest Arab efforts to describe Ottoman Istanbul, less than a century after its conquest. But it also offers valuable insight into the intellectual life of the city, and gives an early account of Turkish-Arab contact so soon after the Ottoman conquest of the Arab lands. The significance of Badruddin al-Ghazzi as an observer of Ottoman cultural and intellectual life derives from two important facts. Firstly, as a native and resident of Damascus, he was an eyewitness to the Ottomans’ destruction of the Mamluk state and their incorporation of Syria into the Empire. Also significantly, Ghazzi was a member of a long-established family of intellectuals and descended from an extended lineage of Damascene ulema and muftis. As such, he was both part of a population that came into sudden contact with the Ottoman Turks, and an educated-elite commentator on life in the Ottoman-Turkish Empire. His representation of the Empire and its people therefore assumes special import. To suggest that Ghazzi’s work has been understudied would be a great understatement. There is no doubt that it deserves much greater attention than that which it has thus far received. As a remarkably early example of an Arab portrayal of the Ottoman Turks and the lands they inhabited, it represents a valuable account of ethnic relations in the Empire. It can also help determine how the Arab intellectual regarded the role and place of the Turks in the Dar ul-Islam. Thus, giving Ghazzi’s travelogue the attention it deserves can allow us to better understand the complex web of relations that bound Turks and Arabs together for centuries.