Representations of Self and the Other in Two Iraqi Travelogues of the Ottoman Period

Abstract

Over the years, a number of important studies have been written on aspects of premodern travel in the Islamic world. Most of the literature examining the travel circuits of Ottoman/Arab bureaucrats, scholars, and merchants inevitably gives rise to the question of communal self-awareness and identity. How did pre-modern travelers envisage themselves and the “other”? What allowed some of them to create “imagined communities” of like-minded sojourners, incorporating space, ideology, and shared origin into a notion of exclusive commonality? How did travel contribute to the emergence of theories of “national” exceptionalism from among the fluid traditions of de-centralized imperial control? Why was it that the most favored classes in the empire's provinces were usually the first to register their unease with the status quo and to experiment with different levels of self-perception and identity? Benedict Anderson's thesis on pre-modern travel is instructive on all of these issues. His point of departure is that the frequent journeys of provincial functionaries, bureaucrats, and scholars, whether to perform the obligations of religious pilgrimage or to oversee the administrative needs of empire, paradoxically provided indigenous elites aspiring for representation and recognition in the mother country (or empire) with the catalyst for the development of a wider sense of identification with their home regions. Finding their desires for increased mobility thwarted by the central power, provincial elites in 18th-century Spanish America eventually chose the way of armed resistance to regain control of what was now perceived to be a “common” destiny.