Travel narratives are a challenging source, reflecting the views and perceptions of other countries and cultures, as held by the authors and the society of which they were a part. While travelogues supposedly were testimonies relaying personal observations and experiences to an intended readership, genre conventions, reader expectations and the demands of patrons and publishers conditioned form and content, so that in some instances, the personal contribution of the author was more apparent than real. Reasons for writing travelogues varied widely; some authors claimed to transmit information, while in other cases, the aim was mainly to enterta?n. As the complex and hybrid genre of the travelogue oscillates between fact and fiction, it continues to pose formidable challenges to historians.
The contributors to the present panel deal with travel narratives from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century (by James De Kay, Samuel Cox, Edwin Grosvenor, H.G. Dwight, and Joseph Booth, Domenico Sestini, Ahmed Hamdi ?irvanl?, Guillaume-Antoine Olivier, and Muhammed bin Ahmed of Edirne), with the Ottoman Empire as the central focus. The contributions examine the travelogues of Ottomans, who travelled to the East or discuss the descriptions of persons and events in the Ottoman Empire mentioned in travelogues written by Europeans and Americans.
Two contributors deal with the question of which factors influenced the authors' perceptions. Relationships and ideologies that shaped the authors play a role here. One of the central questions is whether there are parallels to other Ottoman travelers and travelogues.
Other scholars, being historians, are interested in the value of travelogues as historical sources; in this case, comparing a narrative with information derived from archival materials allows the researcher to evaluate to what extent the author of the travelogue at issue has collected information on site, and where he/she has recourse to established tropes. In certain instances, such an investigation may reveal the limitations of the archival documentation as well, as officials had their own interests to consider.
Thus, this panel will address the question of how far prefiguration, genre conventions and (perceived) audience demands determined what people published about their travels. Was there any room for introducing the observations of the authors at issue? Were some writers interested in understanding the dynamics behind the scenes to which they were fleeting witnesses? Could authors by their commitment to what they regarded as historical truths, influence or change established narratives and perhaps even create new ones?
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Dr. M. Fatih Calisir
This paper examines the life and travel notes of Muhammed bin Ahmed of Edirne (b. ca. 1600 – d. ca. 1681), a Kadizadeli-minded Turkish physician, translator, and a "world traveler" who, he claims, traveled the world for "forty-fifty years." Although he did not write a travelogue, Muhammed bin Ahmed's travel notes dispersed throughout his translations provide us enough data to reconstruct his biography and far-reaching travels in distant geographies. According to his notes, he visited Egypt, Damascus, Iraq, Yemen, Oman, Sindh, and India and met the best scholars and physicians of these lands. He reports that he was in India in 1060/1650, serving the Mughal Shah as his physician. Upon his return to Istanbul, Muhammed bin Ahmed translated seven Arabic texts (three of them in the field of medicine and four in Islamic theology) into Turkish with notes. It was through these translations that he sought the patronage of the Ottoman ruling elite including Sultan Mehmed IV (1648-87, d. 1693), the grand viziers Fazil Ahmed Pasha (1661-76, d. 1676) and Kara Mustafa Pasha (1676-83, d. 1683), the governor of Budin Canbolatzade Huseyin Pasha (1672-73, d. 1680), and Gevherhan Sultan (the daughter of Sultan Ibrahim, d. 1694). In his translations and notes, Muhammed bin Ahmed emerges as a fervent defender of Islamic orthodoxy and a supporter of the Kadizadelis, a seventeenth-century Ottoman revivalist movement named after Kadizade Mehmed Efendi (d. 1635). He refers to religious figures in the lands he visited, comments on beliefs and local customs of the people, compares them with Sunni orthodoxy, and on some occasions, calls for Ottoman military intervention to correct their understanding of Islam, particularly of the Shiite Muslims. Muhammed bin Ahmed's travel notes thus give us a fresh perspective on Ottoman translations as ego-documents. These notes also provide us with an opportunity to understand how Muhammed bin Ahmed's Kadizadeli mindset and patronage relations with the Ottoman ruling elite shaped the way he perceives himself and others and to what extent he is similar or different from his contemporary Ottoman world travelers.
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The writings of Domenico Sestini (b. Florence 1750, d. Florence 1832) offer themselves to verification by the historian. While occasionally referring to the European works that he has read, Sestini is of special interest as his accounts record events and relationships that we do not find in other European travelogues. In reporting on his overland travels from Istanbul to Basra in 1781-82, Sestini has described a rebellion in the northern Anatolian town of S?vas, in which both Muslims and Armenians participated. Rebellions against the representatives of absent provincial governors (mütesellims) were frequent at that time, usually concerning taxes that locals considered abusive.
Sestini and his fellow travelers found themselves in the middle of such an uprising, and the author expressed some sympathy for the rebels, although he narrowly escaped from a building to which the opponents of the mütesellim had set fire. By contrast, the uprising does not seem to have left many traces in the Ottoman archives.
However, in 2008 a Turkish historian has analyzed a significant amount of archival documentation on the S?vas rebellion of Kenan-zâde Ahmed and Mütevelli-zâde Mahmud, which took place in 1818, when Mahmud II was stabilizing his still fragile control over Ottoman provinces dominated by notables and magnates. A comparison between the two sources, one narrative and written by a foreigner and the other Ottoman and archival, reveals many similarities between Sestini’s account and that of Sultan Mahmud’s officials. This fact is a testimony to the ‘generic’ character of these uprisings, which resulted from the structure of provincial financial administration. However, these similarities document Sestini’s capacity for observation as well.
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Dr. Robert Zens
The proposed paper examines the writings of the noted French entomologist Guillaume-Antoine Olivier regarding the notorious Ottoman rebel notable Pasvano?lu Osman Pasha. Sent by the republican government in 1792 to study the natural history of the Ottoman Empire and Persia, Olivier returned to France in 1798 with a large collection of specimens for study as well as enough information to write a two-volume account of the contemporary Ottoman Empire, concerning its political, socio-economic, and environmental conditions. Although Voyage dans l'empire Othoman, l'Égypte et la Perse contains a treasure trove of information on many subjects, the discussion of Pasvano?lu Osman Pasha of Vidin is noteworthy. Published in 1800, Olivier’s travel account provides significant, if not fanciful, detail about the life of the then infamous rebel whose name had frequently graced the leading newspapers of Europe over the previous three years regarding the attempts by the Ottoman central government to capture and eliminate him. Olivier’s laudatory portrayal of Pasvano?lu as a “liberator of the oppressed” became the standard account repeated by future European historians and travelers to the region. Despite his actual motives and actions, amongst European writers on the Ottoman Empire Pasvano?lu became a symbol of resistance to tyranny, be that Ottoman or perceived European tyranny.
Following an examination of both Voyage dans l'empire Othoman, in general, and Olivier’s depiction of Pasvano?lu, in particular, this portrayal is compared to the “godless traitor” Pasvano?lu seen in contemporary Ottoman accounts, namely chronicles and documents originating from state and provincial officials and residents. Despite this noted difference between the “traitor” and “rebel hero” Pasvano?lu, future European writers continued to follow Olivier’s lead almost without exception, culminating in the report of Louis Auguste François Mériage’s official mission to Vidin in 1807 and reinforcing this image of the romantic rebel. Ironically other Ottoman rebels such as Ali Pasha of Janina rarely were portrayed in a positive light by visitors to the Ottoman Balkans.
In addition to numerous travelers’ accounts, Ottoman chronicles, such as Vassif Tarihi, Asim Tarihi, and Cevdet Tarihi, and archival documents from the Prime Ministry’s Ottoman Archives in Istanbul will be used.
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Dr. Veruschka Wagner
Ahmed Hamdi ?irvanl?, born in ?irvan, either in 1828 or 1831, was an important Ottoman scholar and statesman. He is the author of about twenty works on different topics ranging from Islamic jurisprudence, philosophy and logic to geography. One of them is his travelogue, which he wrote five years after his return from an official mission in August 1877. On this occasion, he travelled the whole Indian Subcontinent, Afghanistan and Swat. His account with the title Hindistân ve Svât ve Afghânistân Seyâ?atnâ?mesi (The Travelogue of India and Swat and Afghanistan) mainly deals with India and is about ?irvanl?’s perception of the region, people, religious practices, and cultural matters. His report reveals linguistic and structural features that were typical for Ottoman travelogues of that time. It not only provides an Ottoman scholar's view of the region and cultures in question, but also gives the reader an image of the author's attitude towards his own society and homeland. Under the keyword “Orientalism alla Turca” the question to be investigated is, which image the author communicates of the observed society as well as his own. And what narrative strategies does the author use to convey his perceptions to his readers.
