This book deals with modern and early modern Middle Eastern travel writing, especially by Ottoman authors. The contributions result from a 2010 workshop on travel writing at the Orient-Institut, Istanbul, and the works analysed date from the sixteenth century to the post-WWI period and range geographically from Ottoman Europe to Egypt, West Europe and Russia. Many of the essays deal with travel to Europe and the authors' perceptions of Europeans, while others discuss imaginary rather than real travels, the religious element in the Muslim worldview, or the Ottoman perspective on the empire's Arab subjects. The volume contributes to the field of cross-cultural travel studies by introducing several lesser known authors and by enriching cross-disciplinary theoretical and critical dialogue.
The essays are grouped into three sections: “Approaching the field of travel writing – the broad picture” (pp. 11–74), “Writing on the self or other – a closer look” (pp. 75–156), and “Drawing lines – borders and crossings in genre” (pp. 157–226). The appendix (pp. 226–62) contains “A researchers' list of Ottoman travel accounts to Europe: bibliographical part” by Caspar Hillebrand. This is a very useful companion to the book and Hillebrand's own chapter titled “Ottoman travel accounts to Europe. An overview of their historical development and a commented researchers' list” (pp. 53–74): it provides an overall introduction to the book and a systematic overview of the sources. Hillebrand proposes a statistically reasoned periodization for extant Ottoman travel writing, distinguishing three periods from c. 1500 to c. 1920. Within each period, he assesses the frequency and types of accounts, the degree of conventional or official reporting, and the growing diversification of genres. The bibliography in the appendix has now been expanded and published as a working paper by the Bonner Forum Osmanistik at http://www.bfo.uni-bonn.de/projekte/ottoman-travel-accounts.
The co-editors' brief introduction (pp. 7–9) sets out the aims of the collection: to create a basis for comparative studies of Middle Eastern travel writing; to present a broad analytical framework across disciplines, geographies and time; and to apply the theory and methods of diverse fields and disciplines to the multicultural travel studies. Individual essays demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of research in the genre and history of travel writing in various ways. Certain themes and motifs recur in different chapters, including discussion of, and challenges to, the concept of “Western” Orientalism. Jasmin Khosravie adds to the prevailing Ottoman–European axis an Iranian feminist perspective (“Iranian women on the road. The case of Ṣadīqe Doulatābādī in Europe, 1923–27”, pp. 131–56). A modern Arab view of Europe is the subject of Mehdi Sajid's case study “Rashīd Riḍā in Europe. A monomythic reading of his travel narrative” (pp. 179–202). The most famous Ottoman travelogue, Evliya Çelebi's Seyâhatnâme (seventeenth century), is discussed in the contributions by Nazli İpek Hüner and Bekim Agai from different perspectives. Hüner addresses Ottoman perceptions of the East by bringing together the narratives about Cairo by Mustafa Âli (1541–1600) and Evliya Çelebi (1611–c. 1683). Both accounts reflect their Rûmî-centric worldview, which separated the authors' Turco-Ottoman identity from the “geographical Other”. If, by being non-Rûmî, Egypt and Egyptians become “orientalized” by the Ottomans, reasons Hüner, that is an outcome of an invented “Ottoman Orient” (pp. 77, 91). However, he offers a rewrite of two passages from Edward Said's Orientalism to point out how easy it is to “fall into the same trap as Said did” even “when considering narratives as primary sources” (p. 92) and warns against extending Ussama Maqdisi's concept of Ottoman Orientalism to the early modern period. Hüner concludes that in the Ottoman period “otherness” was determined “by the position and norms of the authors”, while Istanbul was the reference point for the two authors in question (p. 96).
Bekim Agai continues the discussion of the Ottoman Other in the chapter “Religion as a determining factor of the Self and the Other in travel literature. How Islamic is the Muslim worldview? Evliya Çelebi and his successors reconsidered” (pp. 101–29). Islamic identity was paramount in determining Muslims' interaction with non-Islamic Europe. Here, Agai argues against Bernard Lewis's template of a “Muslim worldview” and weighs the role of religion within the perceptions of “the Self” and “the Other”. His approach is to take “identity and alterity not as a feature of the entities themselves, but as a feature of their relationship that is determined by both sides” (p. 101). By addressing identity as a process and insisting on historical context, Agai proposes a narrative model of the processes of revision or renewal involved in the descriptions of the Other (Fig. 1, p. 106). Beginning with Evliya Çelebi's visit to Vienna in 1665, he provides examples of how the narrative function and the anticipated reading public determine the negative or positive tone of description, while the religious identity of the author has to be reaffirmed, and travel to non-Islamic lands justified (pp. 112, 117–24). He points out that religion “can be totally left out of the description … when identity is not challenged”, and the arrival of secularism did not solve “the issue of religious alterity”, but rather transferred religious difference “into a new rhetoric” (p. 126).
In the third section Leyla von Mende offers an overview of three travel-and-study guides for Ottoman students in Europe from the early 1900s. Her chapter, “Taḥṣīl rehberi as a source for both the traveller and the historian” (pp. 159–77) points out the powerful appeal of Europe to the Ottoman youth of the period not only as a prestigious and exciting travel destination, but also as a means of studying abroad in the name of “saving” the Empire (p. 159). She compares these guidebooks to the other genres and emphasizes their value as historical sources. Written from a Muslim point of view and addressed to a Muslim readership, they also contained discussion of the authors' own state which von Mende views as political writing (p. 170). The remaining two essays venture into the territory of imaginary, as well as real, travel. Rashīd Riḍā's European Journey, published in 1922, is presented by Mehdi Sajid as a “hero's journey” despite lacking a narrative structure. Although Riḍā had previously written about the West, this journey was his first and only one to Europe; it came at the advanced age of 56 and was used by the author primarily to enhance his own political credibility and intellectual authority in the reformist context of the colonial Middle East. Finally, Olcay Akyıldız discusses the travel-novel writer Ahmet Mithat (1844–1912) in the chapter “Imaginary travel(s) as a discursive strategy. The case of Ahmet Mithat and Ottoman constructions of Europe” (pp. 203–26). Akyıldız is primarily interested in separating Mithat's real-life trip from his learning about Europe through reading and his imaginary world of travel. The essay is closely argued, with textuality (and consequently, reading) determining the connections between information, knowledge and imagination. Within the category of “mental” travel Akyıldız distinguishes “imaginary” and “literary” travels, in part based on Mithat's own use of the terms (pp. 205–9). Figures offered on pp. 212–3 and 214 graphically illustrate the progress of Midhat's creative and intellectual activities and published output before and after his “real” travel. Because Midhat's travel writing is self-referential, Akyıldız is able to construct a critique of Orientalism from Midhat's “textual attitude” (p. 215). She finds that, although Mithat engaged in “a severe critique of ‘Orientalism’”, he used multiple creative mechanisms for the legitimization of his own authority as travel writer (p. 217). The central purpose of his travel to Europe was to take part in the 1889 Orientalist Congress; therefore Midhat observed and experienced the prejudices of Orientalist scholars as well as Europeans in general. But more than his travel memoir, the fictional travels of his alter-ego repeatedly bring up the Europeans' preconceptions and prejudices – without ever acknowledging that he himself might hold any faulty preconceptions or, indeed, make mistakes or encounter difficulties. By reversing Said's template, Akyıldız presents us with an intriguing portrait of a privileged “Ottoman occidentalist” Ahmet Mithat. It is such careful questioning and nuanced discussion, applied to travel narratives across subgenres, that make this book a serious and valuable contribution to cultural and political history extending “beyond borders”.
