Out of Istanbul

Abstract

This article is based on a close reading of eighteen works describing journeys from Istanbul to the Eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire and to Europe and the United States undertaken by Ottoman men and women in the last half century of the existence of the Ottoman Empire. It centers on the question of self-perception and self-understanding, asking how the author of the travelogue expresses his or her sense of affiliation and belonging when confronted with “Otherness.” Situating travelogues at the intersection of geography, genre, gender, and textual (re)constructions of the traveling subject and his or her perception of “the foreign,” the article compares the travels of women and men to the West and to the East. The analysis suggests that the differences in Ottoman travelers’ views were not only based on gender but also on other factors such as social status or the time in which their travels took place. While in the West men’s and women’s allegiances more substantially differed, in the East there were strong similarities between the types of identification men and women foregrounded in their works. The article shows that whether they headed toward the West or the East, these men and women traveled primarily as Istanbulites.