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Explore and Reform: Two Travellers from Istanbul to Late Ottoman Syria

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2015

Abstract

The article examines the travel accounts of two representatives of Ottoman-Turkish elites, Şerafeddin Mağmumi and Halide Edib, describing their official missions in Syria in the 1890s and 1910s, respectively. Inspired by the works of Ussama Makdisi, Selim Deringil and Edhem Eldem, it analyses the two travelogues from the perspective of Ottoman Orientalism.

It argues that a variety existed in the views of late Ottoman Turkish elites' attitudes towards the Arab peripheries, requiring a more nuanced approach to the concept of Orientalism.