In historical retrospective local populations in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, and to a lesser degree in the Czech territories, have had experiences of massive interaction with Turkish Muslims in course of the 16th and 17th century when the Ottomans, as well as the Crimean Tatars, invaded the Kingdom of Hungary and waged numerous wars against Poland and the Austrian lands. The Age of the Ottomans has been reflected in the history textbooks of the four Visegrad countries usually under the headings “Turkish wars or Ottoman expansion.” Since the collapse of the Iron Curtain all four states have been involved in an intense effort to re-write textbooks, although the perception of the Ottomans and Muslims did not change a lot. Without claiming to map the whole of the historical presentation of Turks this contribution aims to demonstrate the polyphony within the textbook sources in the region. By analysing grammar schools and seminaries educational materials in all four languages it is possible to specify stereotypes, prejudicies and distortions concerning the perception of the Ottoman Turks. Besides commenting the results of quantitative analytical techniques stress in my presentation will be given to qualitative methods. The aim of this cross-cultural analysis is for example to identify bias vis-a-vis the Turks and Muslims, to examine words with controversial meanings, representation of images or what actually the authors of those textbooks regard as valuable and important information about the Ottomans. Here symbolic and interpretative uses of textbooks will be critically reviewed in order to make some generalizations. Equally, questions such as “what is included, what is omitted and why” from textbooks are going to be approached.