British travellers approach Constantinople: First impressions

Emeritus Professor of the University of Exeter, Gerald MacLean is a literary and cultural historian specialising in Anglo-Ottoman relations and a founding member of 'The Evliya Çelebi Way Project', which established a UNESCO approved equestrian Cultural Route in Western Anatolia.

Many travellers described visiting Constantinople before Henrietta Liston arrived in 1812, and many others wrote about it later. Generalizing beyond this becomes difficult because the city — Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul, call it what you will — has never been one thing but, as we will see, tends to be whatever the visitor wants it to be. Philip Mansel calls it the 'City of the World's Desire', [See note 1] which is a much better way of capturing this uncanny power of the place to inspire longing, if not love, in most of those who arrive there for whatever reason (with, of course, the exceptions who hated the place).

Another feature is that nearly everyone who has ever written about visiting Constantinople knew that other travellers had been there before them. For some this knowledge represented a challenge to say something original, to correct, or to update what had already been written. And this sense of 'belatedness', (a term developed by the scholar of travel writing Ali Behdad) [See note 2] also has intimate links with a kind of nostalgic wonder because on arriving in Constantinople one cannot help recognizing that it has been there for a long, long time, and must once have been ever so slightly different, not necessarily better, but not the same, and so one cannot help wondering what it used to be like. One of Orhan Pamuk's 17th-century characters, on returning to the city of his birth after 12 years away, reflects on the sight of a smiling beggar sitting by the Çemberlitaş, a column erected by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 330 CE: 'Had I been told Istanbul used to be a poorer, smaller and happier city, I might not have believed it, but that’s what my heart told me.' [See note 3] Ancient monuments cannot be avoided and continue to speak to the visitor, whether fictitious, curious, or casual.

What follows complicates these provisional thoughts by pondering how some British travellers, both before and contemporary with, Henrietta Liston, recorded approaching the city. Consider Liston's own attempt at capturing her arrival, obviously composed some time after the experience:

'The approach to Constantinople by water is very fine. The first striking object was the Seven Towers. Their form differs from that of other public buildings and would render them very remarkable did they all exist, but so little use seems to have been lately made of them (as the prison for foreign ministers) that four only are now standing, and the whole place, which is pretty large, appears to be in a state of decay, though still enlivened by the intermixture of gardens and fine trees, as all the Turkish situations are.'

Liston had clearly seen enough to generalize about other 'public buildings' and, given her fascination for horticulture, report how the decayed spaces of the historical past remained alive through gardens and trees. For Liston, reflecting on what used to be authenticates her personal claim to a distinctive perception of the moment of arrival. Notice how the 'approach by water' — combining the vista and the act of arriving — is 'very fine,' as are those 'fine trees' that declare possession of spaces abandoned by the past. Reading Liston, one cannot avoid being struck by her constant need to express her sense of discrimination, marked by an almost compulsive use of 'fine' to describe things (well over a hundred times) far more often than 'pretty' (35), 'picturesque' (13), 'charming' (18), or even 'beautiful' / 'beautifully' (78). But perhaps what really matters here is that she approached 'by water,' which distinguishes her from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who travelled overland and made no claims to having described her thoughts on arrival.

If Liston was conscious that Montagu and many others had been and written before her, she would not have known of one previous visitor who was among the very earliest Englishmen to write, like her, about sailing to Constantinople. In August 1599, Thomas Dallam, the inventor of an ingenious clock-work organ which Queen Elizabeth I presented to sultan Mehmet III on his accession to power, arrived after five months at sea [out of] from Plymouth aboard a ship called the 'Hector'. He too describes travelling up the Dardanelles in a small boat, having left the ship to make its own way. He too stopped in Silivri, a town on the northern shore of the Sea of Marmara which he called 'Salabrea' and Liston called 'Silivria,' the day before reaching the city. Here he was amazed at the sight of melons as big as pumpkins 'sould for the vallue of one penye.' For Dallam, his first sight of Constantinople proved to be a non-event that appears in his diary thus: 'The 15th day, beinge Wednesday, we arrived at Constantinople.' That's all. [See note 4]

Dallam was among the first Englishmen to write about approaching Constantinople after a long sea voyage, but was not the first British visitor on record. In the sixth century CE, a French king sent a group of Englishmen to Emperor Justinian 'ambitiously boasting, as though the sayd Isle [of Britain] had bene under his jurisdiction.' In 1056 king Edward the Confessor sent 'three of his Nobles' as ambassadors to the Byzantine court. [See note 5] These were silent travellers, but in 1064 one Ingulphus, later abbot of Croyland, wrote that having 'passed prosperously through many provinces' of Europe, he 'at length attained unto Constantinople. Where doing reverence unto the Emperour Alexius, we sawe the Church of Sancta Sophia, and kissed divers sacred reliques.' [See note 6] Curiously, while the recorded date of his journey is reliable, Alexius I Komnenos was only eight in 1064. On becoming Emperor in 1081, Alexius promptly appointed English halberdiers, 'highly esteeming their fidelity,' to be 'the guarders of the persons of the Emperours of Constantinople.' He subsequently recommended them to his son John, establishing a tradition that continued for a 'long time afterwards.' [See note 7] None of these halberdiers wrote about their lives in imperial service.

By the late 16th century, commerce brought more and more Englishmen to Constantinople, especially once trading agreements were established in the 1580s and the Levant Company began sending resident ambassadors and merchants. Most were too busy making money to bother writing, but some left records. An anonymous account of the 1582 journey of the first ambassador, William Harborne, anticipates both Dallam and Liston by offering a daily log of travelling up the Dardanelles, though it is otherwise very short on description. The writer has nothing to say about the city beyond visiting 'Santa Sophia', with greater enthusiasm for detail than Ingulphus, noting how he admired their 'Pulpets' and the numerous 'chappels' containing tombs with 'walles hanged with Tapistrie of great price … no lesse than five hundred pounds.' [See note 8]

At the time, travel writing was dominated by secular notions of discovery, of the objective, eye-witness account. The task of travelling writers was to record whatever they saw that was notable and to record any important events taking place during their visit. Another diplomatic travel account is that of Richard Wrag who, in 1593, accompanied the second ambassador, Edward Barton. Wrag fast forwards through the sea journey, noting only that on reaching Gallipoli, four of them left the ship and took 'a boat of the place, with two watermen, which rowed us along the Thracian shore to Constantinople, which sometime sailing and sometime rowing, in foure dayes they performed.' He too recorded arriving at 'the Seven towers … the first part of the city that we came unto.' [See note 9] Thereafter, his account only describes the formal ceremonies of investing the new ambassador. Constantinople constitutes a barely visible setting for the processions.

John Sanderson, a Levant Company accountant who visited Constantinople three times between 1585 and 1602, composed a historical description of the city. But he reported nothing about his initial impressions, merely noting 'the 9th day of March we arrived at Constantinople.' [See note 10] A more enthusiastic traveller was 'Fox,' a servant who travelled overland with Henry Cavendish to Constantinople in 1589. Fox disliked most places, especially Venice — 'in my simple opynyon yt ys a pryson of so muche liberty and a plac of all maner of abomynacyon' — and Sofia — 'a veary bad toune and the peple of ane evell natur, for they would stand and stare upon us and spyt upon us, but they dyd not beat us.' Nevertheless, he became very excited anticipating Constantinople, reporting from Adrianople:

'At thys toune we hyred wagons to Constantynople, being five dayes jorney. Uppon Munday the xvith of June we fond that great cytty, the whyche we had so long sought. Constantynople, otherwise called Strambould. It passethe my understanding to say muche of thys great cytty for our tyme of being was but short, about xiiii dayes, but I se yt evell build and the inhabytants rude and proud and veary malyshyous toward Chrystans, tearming of them doges and offering them many abuses.' [See note 11]

Despite expectations, Fox was clearly disappointed. He had arrived shortly after a violent Janissary uprising and series of fires that had destroyed much of the city: the people were not happy, and the English travellers were not welcomed.

Arriving in January 1597, Fynes Moryson did not encounter social unrest, but was equally unimpressed by the inhabitants and buildings. The first of these early visitors who travelled for the purpose of writing and publishing his travelogue, Moryson struggled up the Dardanelles in a small boat against strong winter currents, finally arriving 'towards evening' at the 'seven Towers, yet by reason of the foreseaid swift channell running from the black Sea full against us, with a most faire wind we could not land in the haven of Constantinople till midnight.' Without pause he proceeds to complain about the terrible food he has had to endure. As for the city, Moryson wandered about and produced a sketch map indicating ancient and modern sites, but remained indifferent, concluding that 'the buildings of the City have no magnificence.' [See note 12]

Like Moryson, the Scottish traveller William Lithgow travelled to write and publish, but unlike the Englishman enthusiastically described his first sight of Constantinople in 1609 as follows:

'After we had fetcht up the famous City of Calcedon in Bithinia on our right hand; I beheld on our left hand, the Prospect of that little World, the great City of Constantinople; which indeed yeeldeth such an outward splendour to the amazed beholder, of goodly Churches, stately Towers, gallant Steeples, and other such things, whereof now the World make so great accompt, that the whole earth cannot equall it.'

Yet Lithgow sounds as if he was assembling a series of obvious remarks. Like Sanderson and Moryson, Lithgow produced a potted history of the city, but despite initial admiration, his staunch Calvinism led him to conclude: 'Truly I may say of Constantinople …

'A Painted Whoore, the maske of deadly sin,
Sweet faire without, and stinking foule within.'

So much for his first impressions.

Lithgow was not alone in disliking the city. Arriving in 1617, Peter Munday was uncertain what to say and so disclaimed the need to say anything about 'the famous Port and Imperiall Cittie of Constantinople' since 'there beinge soe ample and elegant description else where … I forebeare reiteration.' But he couldn't resist and soon returned to the question: 'Concerning Constantinople, where I remayned three or foure years, I tooke no notice of any thing until my departure thence' and then he summarized descriptions from other writers. Reflecting once again on his own experience, he notes how the city may …

'surpasse London, for spaciousnesse of ground … but yet come no way neare my satisfaction, for here is Neither good lodging, proportionable fare, free recourse, gracious entertainment, true religion, secure abiding, allowable pleasure, Orderly government, Or any thing wherein a Noble citty is made glorious indeed: Thus much for Constantinople.'

Yet even then Munday has not done, writing 'for my owne observation I tooke no perticuler notice, as elce where I have said,' continuing 'Only I can remember … ' before proceeding with no fewer than ten numbered observations of places and events from his own experience. [See note 14] Try as he might, Munday simply could not avoid returning to his impressions of the city and recording them.

Early voyagers by sea confirm Liston's perception that reaching Yedikule, the 'Seven Towers,' signalled a key moment of approaching 'the first part of the city,' but many say no more about their first approach. Even the loquacious George Sandys mentions only that 'we came to anchor a little below the seven Towers: and betimes in the morning arrived at the custome-house' without any further comment. [See note 15] Unlike Sandys, Moryson and Lithgow, most early travellers were practical men, recording logs of their journeys with few aspirations to literary recognition. A notable exception is Henry Austell who, in 1585, left a remarkable impression of his first sight of Constantinople that to me, at least, sounds more like personal experience than Lithgow's rather formulaic description. Arriving overland, Austell noted reaching 'Siliveri, which by report was the last towne that remained Christian,' and continued:

'The 9 of September wee arrived at the great and most stately Citie of Constantinople, which for the situation and proude seate thereof, for the beautifull and commodious havens and for the great and sumptuous buildings of their Temples, which they called Moschea, is to be preferred before all the Cities of Europe. And there the Emperor of the Turkes then living, whose name was Amurat, kept his Court and residence, in a marveilous goodly place, with divers gardens and houses of pleasure, which is at least two English miles in compasse.' [See note 16]

Austell's language, his diction, idiom and vocabulary, is clearly Elizabethan though his aesthetic awareness anticipates a later era, that of the early 18th century, when British travel writing had become an enormously popular and profitable literary form dominated by appreciating landscapes, noticing exotic flora and fauna, observing historical ruins, and marvelling with wonder at the costumes and manners of foreign people.

Consider Austell's observations alongside the paragraph in Liston's account that follows the one I previously quoted:

'As we advanced, Constantinople itself opened to us, regularly ascending a range of high grounds, or hills, with a number of fine mosques and elegant minarets overtopping the tall cypresses with which they are delightfully mixed. Mosques are almost the only public buildings that appear. Near them are always placed one or two more minarets, and to these buildings, with the great quantity of trees, particularly cypresses, Constantinople and its adjoining suburbs chiefly owe their beauty; for otherwise the houses, notwithstanding their fine situation, would appear poor. In its present state, however, it presents a "coup d'oeil" altogether unique.'

Writing two centuries previously, Austell describes almost identically the same sights, lacking only the personification that allows Liston to feel she is being personally welcomed by a great city as it 'opened to us.' For by Liston's day, British travel writing had evolved in such a way as to become subject to the so-called 'sentimental turn' that was heralded in 1759 by the publication of Adam Smith's 'Theory of Moral Sentiment's and the first two volumes of Laurence Sterne's novel 'Tristram Shandy'. The conventions of travel writing were swiftly transformed, especially after the appearance in 1768 of Sterne's 'A Sentimental Journey'. Travel writers were no longer expected simply to recount what they could claim to have seen in descriptive detail or to collect facts. The task now also included conveying to readers what it felt like to be somewhere distant, to record their feelings and perceptions, to express in an original way how exotic sights generated emotional resonances illustrating the writer's refined sensibility. Facts and dates, sights and sounds, monuments and local people were all still important, not just for themselves but for providing occasions for the traveller to feel something novel. As so often with literary conventions, skilled parody provides a fine example.

'So it came about that at five past three on the 16th day of January, with only the clothes we stood up in, Peter and I entered Constantinople.

'I was in considerable spirits, for I had got the final lap successfully over, and I was looking forward madly to meeting my friends; but, above all, the first sight was a massive disappointment. I don't quite know what I had expected — a sort of fairyland Eastern city, all white marble and blue water, and stately Turks in surplices, and veiled houris, and roses and nightingales, and some sort of string band discoursing sweet music. I had forgotten that winter is pretty much the same everywhere. It was a drizzling day, with a south-east wind blowing, and the streets were long troughs of mud. The first part I struck looked like a dingy colonial suburb — wooden houses and corrugated iron roofs, and endless dirty, sallow children. There was a cemetery, I remember, with Turks' caps stuck at the head of each grave. Then we got into narrow steep streets which descended to a kind of big canal. I saw what I took to be mosques and minarets, and they were about as impressive as factory chimneys. By and large we crossed a bridge, and paid a penny for the privilege. If I had known it was the famous Golden Horn I would have looked at it with more interest, but I saw nothing save a lot of moth-eaten barges and some queer little boats like gondolas. Then we came into busier streets, where ramshackle cabs drawn by lean horses spluttered through the mud. I saw one old fellow who looked like my notion of a Turk, but most of the population had the appearance of London old-clothes men.' [See note 17]

Thus James Buchan's 'Greenmantle' of 1916. But back in May 1810, it was also raining and 'very hazy' when Byron's travelling companion, John Cam Hobhouse, arrived and disagreed. When first glimpsing those minarets he thought them 'arranged much in the same order, and having the same appearance, as the distant turrets of King's College Chapel at Cambridge'. [See note 18] As far as I can make out, Buchan never visited Constantinople, or even Turkey for that matter. Yet when his fictional narrator Richard Hannay arrived, so many travellers had already written about what they saw and felt that never being there proved no impediment to evocative description. Buchan even anticipates the feeling Orhan Pamuk terms 'hüzün', an ambiguous melancholy 'that is unique to Istanbul, and that binds its people together' through a history of loss and worldly failure 'reflected in the city's "beautiful" landscapes and its people … that is ultimately as life affirming as it is negating.' [See note 19]

By the end of the 18th century, writing about travelling to Ottoman lands had become such a popular activity that some, like Peter Munday long before, declined describing their approach to the city, so well-worn and hackneyed had the topic become. One example: returning to London from a business trip to India in 1797, the wine-merchant John Jackson travelled by horse from Basra and Baghdad through Kurdistan, eventually approaching Constantinople from Gebze on the Gulf of Izmit. 'Constantinople,' he declared, 'having been so often described by travellers, and being so well known to English readers, the author thinks it neither expedient nor proper to swell this volume by accounts that cannot possibly possess either novelty or interest to recommend them.' Jackson preferred staking his claim on the basis of describing 'such parts as he has visited … [that are] but little frequented by former travellers from England.' [See note 20] Others, including the Scottish physician Julius Griffiths, who set out in 1785, hedged their bets rhetorically. 'The magnificent and commanding situation of the metropolis of the Ottoman empire is,' he wrote, 'so well known, that it may be thought superfluous to describe it here: — But who can have enjoyed the delightful view from the heights of the mountains of Scutari without feeling a desire to retrace the various objects which presented themselves to his enchanted sight?' Who indeed? Griffiths instantly abandons himself to that desire and continues thusly for a substantial paragraph listing 'palaces, villas, Kiosks, gardens, villages, and groves,' not to mention mosques and minarets, groves of cypress trees, boats along the Bosphorus, and a good deal more besides. [See note 21]

Griffiths' 'Travels' appeared in 1805, by which time rivalry over writing personal accounts of approaching Constantinople was fully underway. Griffiths dedicated his book to Elizabeth, Lady Craven, who composed her epistolary 'Journey' of 1789 in the expressive style of the sentimental traveller made famous by Sterne — lots of broken sentences held together with long dashes and strings of hyphens. Clearly, Griffiths sought to flatter his aristocratic patroness. For her part, Craven was keen to displace the memory of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, insisting that 'whoever wrote L M---'s Letters (for she never wrote a line of them) misrepresents things most terribly.' Montagu's account of 'the Asian shore … cover'd with fruit trees, villages and the most delightful Landschapes in nature' had yet to be gently mocked by Lord Byron in 'Don Juan' as 'the view / Which charm'd the charming Mary Montagu.' [See note 22] Meanwhile, Craven approached from the Black Sea in a 'long-boat' down the Bosphorus:

'I am certain no landscape can amuse or please in comparison with the varied view, which the borders of this famed Straight compose — Rocks, verdure, ancient castles, built on the summit of the hills by the Genoese — modern Kiosks, Minarets, and large platane-trees, rising promiscuous in the vallies — large meadows — multitudes of people, and boats swarming on the shore and on the water.' [See note 23]

None of these accounts, however, would impress readers as much as that of Thomas Hope's eponymous hero, Anastasius, who breathlessly exclaimed 'at last Constantinople rose, in all its grandeur, before us,' a thrilling sight.

'With eyes riveted on the opening splendours, I watched, as they rose out of the bosom of the surrounding water, the pointed minarets, the swelling cupolas, and the innumerable habitations, which, either stretching away along the winding shore, reflected their image in the wave, or creeping up the steep sides of the mountains, traced their outline on the sky … Entranced by the magnificent spectacle, I felt as if all the faculties of my soul were insufficient fully to embrace its glories: I hardly retained power to breathe; and almost apprehended that in doing so, I might dispel the gorgeous vision, and find its whole vast fabric only a delusive dream!' [See note 24]

Based on his travels in Turkey in 1795, Hope's romantic novel appeared in 1819 and was an overnight success, reaching 13 editions and translations into four languages. When Hope's publisher, John Murray, issued his 'Hand-book for Travellers in The Ionian Isles, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor, and Constantinople', he opened the section on Constantinople with this very passage in full: it had already been quoted at length by reviewers of the novel. [See note 25]

Not all early 19th century travellers attempted to compete by means of their initial impressions. In August 1804, Thomas MacGill thought 'the approach to it [Constantinople] is one of the most beautiful in the world, but upon landing, far different ideas are excited.' [See note 26] James Morier merely noted, upon arriving on 18 July 1809, that he was wearing clothes he had not changed since leaving Tehran 'two months and ten days previously.' [See note 27] Travelling from Silivri on horseback in 1817, William Macmichael 'proceeded over a dull stony tract … until, at length, we descried the minarets of the mighty Stamboul', but if they reminded him of anything, he didn't report it. [See note 28] When the archaeologist Charles Fellows landed in 1838, he 'observed vast numbers of porpesses, which seemed to threaten to upset the light boats or caifes which swarm in the water,' [See note 29] and nothing more.

Fortunately I need not continue, since the story of how the 19th became the century 'per excellence' for British travellers to Turkey has been thoroughly investigated by Reinhold Schiffer. [See note 30] Exploring how British travel writers furiously debated the status of Constantinople as an aesthetic object, Schiffer provides an illuminating guide to the lives and first impressions of writers omitted here, including John Auldjo, Mrs E C E Baillie, Lady Alicia Blackwood, Lady Annie Brassey, Charles Elliott, John Galt, William Hunter, William Leake, William Miller, Charles Monk, Julia Pardoe, Michael Quinn, William Rose, Albert Smith, George Thornbury, Thomas Thornton, Charles Vane, and several others. Admitting that a minority, like Vane, were 'ready to be offended or disappointed', Schiffer leaves out my favourite, the self-styled 'Idle Woman in Constantinople.' Friend of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Frances Minto Elliot approached Constantinople aboard the Orient Express in 1891 and instantly reviled everything she saw.

'What can this water with a flat edge be?
The Sea of Marmara?
Impossible!
I confess my feeling is distinctly one of disappointment. No excitement is caused by these flat shores so like a Norfolk broad … And here it must be noted, as a melancholy fact, that the making of this railway has destroyed much of the little that was left of ancient Byzantium.'

Ah yes, Byzantium. Elliot cannot bear the Turkish present and so wanders about too busy to see anything actually existing while being utterly rapt in fantasies of the past, imagining 'vistas of marble colonnades; fountains gushing abundantly from bronze or porphyry; great palaces with wide parapets and gilded balconies laden with lavish sculpture' [See note 31] and conjuring conversations between Justinian and Theodora watching charioteers rioting in the Hippodrome.

For myself? Like Elliot I arrived by train, not the Orient Express but a now-defunct daily service that ran from Athens. I had boarded at Xanthi, about 75 miles from the border where the Greek engine and coaches were exchanged for Turkish counterparts. The change-over took fully four hours. The whole journey of less than 300 miles took 27 hours. It was the 28th of December 1975, and raining. My first impressions of 'Polis', 'the City' as it was called in Kavala where I was teaching English, were much like those of Richard Hannay. 'When we came within a few miles of the city,' I wrote to my mother on 2 January 1976:

'There were dilapidated concrete buildings right along the rail line, flats above shops, with great nests of electric cables dangling from one to the next along the roof line. It was all rather drab and grey as we walked into town looking for a restaurant where all travellers go in the hope of finding a cheap hotel. We got there and found a hotel for 10 lira (40p) a night and went to a Turkish bath where, for the same price, you are given soap and a towel. The bath is a huge marble room that seems less hot than it really is, with basins and marble slabs to lie on. We ate and went back to the hotel room which was unheated. I'd taken my sleeping bag & slept ok, but Barrie froze to death, so next morning we moved to another place nearby where we got a room for 70 lira — but with heating, hot water and a carpet. It wasn't until the night that we discovered it was infested with bugs.'

It appears from the rest of the letter that we did some obvious things: visits to the Grand Bazaar, Aghia Sophia, Blue Mosque and the zoo that used to exist at Gülhane Park ('it was strange — it had chickens, dogs, cats, pigeons, eagles, a Shetland pony, camels, bears and an owl'). Sightseeing was interspersed with drinking tea and eating in 'the restaurant where all travellers go', the so-called 'Pudding Shop' on Divanyolu, first stop on the hippie trail to all places east and the subject of a recent Turkish novel. [See note 32] Ten years later I was looking for somewhere to rent in Los Angeles and found a cute bungalow in West Hollywood. The landlord told me on the phone there was a long waiting list of prospective tenants ahead of me; I told him it was urgent. He liked the English accent and agreed to meet. The first thing he said was 'Weren't you in the Pudding Shop in Istanbul for New Year 1976?' I got the bungalow.

Footnotes

Note 1

Philip Mansel, 'Constantinople: City of the World's Desire', 1453-1924 (London: Murray, 1995).

Note 2

Ali Behdad, 'Belated Travellers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution' (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).

Note 3

Orhan Pamuk, 'My Name is Red', trans, Erdağ Göknar (London: Faber, 2001), p.7.

Note 4

Thomas Dallam, 'Diary, in J Theodore Bent, ed., 'Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant' (London: Hakluyt Society, 1893), 57-58.

Note 5

Richard Hakluyt, 'The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation' (1589; rpt. 8 vols. London: Dent, 1910), 2: 402, 404-5.

Note 6

Hakluyt, 'Principal Navigations', 2: 407.

Note 7

Hakluyt, 'Principal Navigations', 2: 419.

Note 8

Hakluyt, 'Principal Navigations', 3: 109.

Note 9

Hakluyt, 'Principal Navigations', 4: 2-3.

Note 10

John Sanderson, 'The Travels of John Sanderson in the Levant, 1584-1603', ed. William Foster (London: Hakluyt Society, 1931), pp.38, 84; his descriptive account of the city can be found pp.65-83.

Note 11

Fox, Mr. Harrie Cavendish his Journey to and From Constantinople 1589, ed. A C Wood (London: Hakluyt Society, 1940), pp.12, 15, 16.

Note 12

Fynes Moryson, 'An Itinerary Written By Fynes Moryson' (1617; rpt. 4 vols. Glasgow: MacLehose, 1907), 2: 89, 90, 100.

Note 13

William Lithgow, 'The Totall Discourse of the Rare Adventures and Painfull Peregrinations' (1632; rpt. Glasgow: MacLehose, 1906), pp.116, 124.

Note 14

Richard Carnac Temple, ed., 'The Travels of Peter Munday, in Europe and Asia, 1608-1667'. 'Vol. One: Travels in Europe, 1608-1628' (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1907), pp.21, 25, 30.

Note 15

George Sandys, 'A Relation of a Journey begun An: Dom: 1610' (1615; rpt. London: Barrett, 1621), p.28.

Note 16

Hakluyt, 'Principal Navigations', 3: 163.

Note 17

John Buchan, 'Greenmantle' (1916; rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958), 126-7.

Note 18

John Cam Hobhouse, 'A Journey through Armenia and … Turkey in Europe and Asia to Constantinople during the years 1809 and 1810', 2 vols. (London: J. Cawthorne, 1813), 1: 320.

Note 19

Orhan Pamuk, 'Istanbul: Memories of a City, trans. Maureen Freely' (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), pp.82, 83.

Note 20

John Jackson, 'Journey from India, Towards England in the Year 1797' (London: Cadell and Davies, 1799).

Note 21

Julius Griffiths, 'Travels in Europe, Asia Minor, and Arabia' (London: Cadell, Davies and Hill, 1805), p.57-58.

Note 22

Robert Halsband, ed., 'The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu', 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965-67), 1: 397, and Frederick Page, ed., 'Byron: Poetical Works' (1970; rpt. London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p.712, Canto 5.3.7-8. For a more detailed account of this rivalry, see Donna Landry, 'Love Me, Love My Turkey Book: Letters and Turkish Travelogues in Early Modern England,' in Amanda Gilroy and W M Verhoeven, eds, 'Epistolary Histories: Letters, Fiction, Culture' (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2000), 51-68.

Note 23

Elizabeth, Lady Craven, 'A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople In a Series of Letters' (London: G G J and J Robinson, 1789), pp.105, 198-9.

Note 24

[Thomas Hope,] 'Anastasius: Or, Memois of a Greek; Written at the Close of the Eighteenth Century', 3 vols. (London: Murray, 1819), 1: 71-72.

Note 25

'A Hand-book for for Travellers in The Ionian Isles, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor, and Constantinople' (London: John Murray, 1840), p.150, and subsequent revised editions. See reviews in 'The Monthly Review', 91 (January, 1820), pp. 1-16, and 'The Quarterly Review' 24: 48 (October-January, 1821), pp.511-528.

Note 26

Thomas Macgill, 'Travels in Turkey, Italy, and Russia, during the years 1803, 1804, 1805, & 1806', 2 vols. (London and Edinburgh: Murray and Constable, 1808), 1: 133.

Note 27

James Morier, 'A Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor to Constantinople in the years 1808 and 1809' (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1812), p.362.

Note 28

William Macmichael, 'Journey from Moscow to Constantinople, in the years 1817, 1818' (London: Murray, 1819), p.165.

Note 29

Charles Fellows, 'A Journal Written during an excursion in Asia Minor' (London: Murray, 1839), p.85.

Note 30

Reinhold Schiffer, 'Oriental Panorama: British Travellers in 19th Century Turkey' (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999).

Note 31

Frances Elliot, 'Diary of an Idle Woman in Constantinople' (London: Murray, 1893), pp.2-3, 41.

Note 32

Liz Behmoaras, 'Lale Pudding Shop' (Istanbul: Doğan, 2020).