ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the qualities of Czech ethnographic writing as established by experience rather than alternative authorities, and it examines the discourse about conversion in the texts to uncover how this discussion disrupts the variety of pre-existing traditions of writing about the Turk. The rise of empirical ethnographic description in the early modern period both fostered and were fostered by the dramatic increase in travel and travel writing. Czech ethnographic description from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries focused more on other parts of Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, rather than farther afield, and was most often a by-product of travel narratives or religious tracts. The fear of 'Turning Turk' suggests that some Czech ethnographers, while attempting to create a discourse of knowledge that robbed the Ottomans of some of their power, instead felt a pull toward the very subjects from which they had been hoping to distance themselves.
