Relocating the Center of the Universe: China and the Ottoman Imperial Project in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

In the sixteenth century, Ottoman encounters with the Habsburg Empire in the West and the Safavids in the East turned violent as they fought these rival empires on the battlefields. This article argues that there was a heightened sensitivity to geographical and historical knowledge about different parts of the world in the sixteenth century Ot- toman Empire. It claims that this development was intimately related to the articulation of the Ottoman claims to universal imperial sovereignty that had to be broadcast to the political and religious rivals both in the East and the West in the sixteenth century. Through an examination of Ali Ekber Khitayi’s from 1516 and Seyfi Çelebi’s  from 1582, this paper demonstrates that the historical and geographical accounts prepared for the Ottoman court in the sixteenth century created China as a model to emulate and as a mirror to reflect Ot- toman imperial ambitions.