ABSTRACT
An analysis of depictions of aspects of Ottoman society and culture, including social structure, Ottoman military, family relations, sexuality, food practices, etc., provides a description of the range of various (and contradictory) depictions of Ottoman society found in sixteenth-century Turcica.
Although contemporaries did not mark a clear distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ aspects of the Turks, many of the Turcica concern themselves with aspects of Ottoman history, government, military, costume, etc., with no reference to theology or faith. Of particular interest to pamphleteers were the history of the rise of the Ottomans, descriptions of the Turkish form of government and governmental/military positions, and the role of slavery in Turkish society (especially the Janissary slave-corps and the harem). The Turcica emphasized Ottoman cruelty and deviant sexual practices alongside praises of Turkish modesty, family relations, and freedom of religion. A central argument of this chapter is that new and more extensive contact with the Turks in combination with Protestant suspicion of traditional sources and a Renaissance-inspired emphasis on empirical observation eroded without entirely displacing received medieval understandings. The inherently contradictory material in the Turcica produced a tension that is a central characteristic of this transitional period in Christian-Islamic relations.
