Traveling within the empire: perceptions of the east in the historical narratives of Mustafa Âli and Evliya Çelebi on Cairo

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1379298 (Table of Contents)

This thesis questions if Egypt was analogous of the "Orient" in the early modern period, at least to the Ottoman literati coming from the imperial center of Istanbul. For the study, the narratives of two Istanbulite literati, Book of Travels by Evliya Çelebi (b. 1611, d. after 1683) and Description of Cairo by Mustafa Âli (b. 1541, d. 1600), are chosen. Since the priority is to portray the perception of Ottoman literati toward the ''others,'' their accounts on Cairo has been appropriate for this goal as they reflected the authors' mentalities. The Ottoman literati coming from the core lands of the Empire, ''the lands of Rum,'' found some of the Egyptian ways of living ''strange''; consequently, they reported the unfamiliar etiquette, public behaviors, and daily routines of the Egyptians. The intended goal in questioning how Cairo was perceived is to provide an alternative framework for studies on Ottoman Orientalism; as the discourse of the literati ''Orientalized'' Egypt as a distant province. The ''Oriental'' status of Egypt was defined by its physical, cultural, and perceived distance to the lands of Rum – especially to the capital, Istanbul. Though ''otherness'' was determined by the position and norms of the authors. This thesis reaches the conclusion that the Ottoman Empire, considered in a way as the ''Orient'' itself, has similar tensions between its center and peripheries.