Creating an Ideal Self: Representations of Infidels in the Late Medieval Anatolian Frontier Narratives

Abstract

Editions of Ottoman texts, for a variety of reasons, rarely apply the full range of instruments considered standard in other philological fields, such as com- parison of a multiplicity of textual witnesses in manuscript and print, comparison with source texts, the juxtaposition of scientific transliteration and translation, and finally a modicum of commentary. This article demonstrates what such a procedure would entail if applied to a chapter of Kâtip Çelebi’s (1609-57) Cihânnümâ. This partial edition shows the many layers in the text, identifies its sources, and integrates the information in the text with that in the map attached to the chapter.