ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a survey of the rich literature written by less-well-known Hispanic observers of the Ottoman world, with a focus on the Ottoman capital of Istanbul. During the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire and Spain under Habsburg rule – and its extended territories spanning from the New World to southern Italy, including Naples and Sicily – became two of the major powers of the Mediterranean world. In the early fifteenth century, having expanded at the expense of Byzantium, the Ottoman realm encapsulated the Anatolian shores of the Black, Aegean and Mediterranean seas. The Ottomans also fully controlled the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelle Straits, the key point between the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean. Diplomatic texts on the Ottoman empire from this period dominate and, whether they were in the form of memoirs or reports, the readership of these works went beyond the world of the civil servants and were read even in literary circles.
