The image of Turkey and the Turks as "The Other" in al-Khiyārī's Tuḥfat al-'Udabā' wa Salwat al-Ghurabā' : a travelogue from the seventeenth century

There are many studies that discuss the image of the "other" in the Arab heritage and the image of the Arab heritage from the 'perspective of the "other." However, most of these studies focus on the present era and the western "other". This study is different in theme and period than studies which have been done previously. Its theme is the image of Turkey and the Turks in a work which belongs to Arab travel literature and which was written more than three centuries ago. There is a noticeable lack in studies that examine the image of the "other" in Arab travel literature by writers belonging to the Arabian Peninsula. The travelogue of Ibrāhīm al-Khiyārī is a literary work written by one of the citizens of that area, therefore, the researcher hopes that his effort will represent an approach which contributes to filling this gap and which sheds light on the cultural production of intellectuals from the Arabian Peninsula in the past centuries. Using the descriptive analytical method, this study has tried to cover aspects of the topic within the conditions available and has written six chapters on the following topics: previous studies on the subject, histories of the Ḥijāz and the Ottoman Empire, the classification of travel writings, a presentation of the travelogue as an object of this study as well as the author and his context, Turkey in the seventh century, its civilization and culture, and finally, the image of non-Muslims in Turkey in the text of the writer. Through an extrapolation of texts that talk about the "non-Muslim other" it is clear that the author of this travelogue - like many writers in past and present - was under the influence of cultural and historical influences especially with regards to the aforementioned minorities, as bias seems to be evident in multiple texts. It therefore seems as though he was writing a personal impression of the "other" rather than simply describing what he saw and experienced.