Like the other Turkish tales, The Bride of Abydos is offered as a faithful portrayal of the Orient. Byron is not alone in viewing the work as a reliable representation of the Muslim East. Both contemporary readers and modern-day critics have generally regarded the poem as an accurate representation too. This is a consensus I want to challenge in the following. There is a very widespread agreement among critics that the work presents the Orient as it truly was or even still is. Abdur Raheem Kidawi claims that Byron is at his best in recreating an Oriental atmosphere when Giaffir claps his hands for servants or when he is shown enjoying 'jerreed' and 'mimic slaughter' as a diversion in the company of the homogeneous 'Maughrabee, Mamaluke, the Kislar and Moors' or when he exclaims 'Ollahs' in the javelin-throwing (I, 231-51).1 Byron is also said to show an 'astute understanding' of the Orient when he refers to the 'horse tails' (II, 232) and explains that this is the standard of a Pasha.2 Other critics, such as Omar Abdullah Bagabas, stress that to a large extent the authenticity of The Bride is suggested by Byron's reference to Eastern myths, Oriental literary fashion, Oriental vocabulary and other Eastern material.3 It is difficult to understand how these critics can conclude that people with such different languages, cultures and ideologies, as well as geographical backgrounds, as those who live in 'the East' can be adequately represented through references to horse tails or a particular ceremony. Yet for these critics it was not even necessary for Byron to be able to converse in any Oriental language for him to understand these people and to develop an objective picture of the 'typical' Oriental. Hence, one should not be surprised when Daniel P. Watkins claims, without providing evidence, that, in his Turkish tales, Byron has 'shown' how Islam endorses 'the spread of violence and exercise of power' even though the author of those tales could not speak any Eastern languages and visited very few Eastern cultures.4 In general, when critics argue in support of the accuracy of The Bride, their reasoning falls into two categories. On the one hand, they lay stress on Byron's personal experience of the Orient. In this way, scholars such as Timothy Webb claim that Byron gained extensive knowledge of the East and its political realities.5 On the other hand, they point out that he studied the works of Orientalists and Eastern travellers, which, generally speaking, Byron himself viewed as reliable.6 Let's begin with first argument. While supporting Byron's credibility as an observer of the Orient, Frederick Garber quotes John Ruskin's assertion that the poet 'spoke only of what he had seen and known and spoke without exaggeration, without mystery, without enmity, and without mercy'.7 According to Byron himself, the first part of The Bride 'was drawn from observations of mine'. He also says that he 'had a living character on [his] eye for Zuleika'. And in a letter to John Murray on The Bride, Byron writes: 'I don't care a lump of sugar for my poetry - but for my costume and my correctness I will combat lustily'.8 Muhammad Sharafuddin concludes from this that 'the tale was inspired by personal adventure in the East'.9 However, equally important is the other reason Byron gave for writing The Bride: It was written in four nights to distract my dreams from ** [...] and had I not done something at the time, I must have gone mad [...]. I am much more indebted to the tale than I can ever be to the most partial reader; as it wrung my thoughts from reality to imagination - from selfish regrets to imagination - and recalled me to a country replete with the brightest and darkest, but always most lively colours of my memory.10 This quotation shows that a great deal more about Byron's own state of mind can be learned from this particular Oriental tale than about the Orient itself. Critics still see Byron as reliable, nevertheless, and their proof lies in his journal, where, talking about Zuleika and quoting Virgil, Byron insists that The Bride deals with actual events: 'quaeque ipse [. …