Chapter 2 Imaginary Voyages, Imagined Ottomans: A Gentleman Impostor, the Köprülüs, and Seventeenth-Century French Oriental Romances
In: Dimensions of Transformation in the Ottoman Empire from the Late Medieval Age to ModernitySearch for other papers by Tülay Artan in
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Abstract
It was through Franz Babinger’s Stambuler Buchwesen im 18. Jahrhundert (1919) that Ottomanists learned about Johann Friedrich Bachstrom, who reportedly established a printing press in Istanbul in 1728/9. Towards the very end of his adventurous life, Bachstrom claimed to be descended from the Grand Vizier Köprülü, though he did not say which Köprülü, and the Prince of Translyvania, Ferenc I Rákóczi. Artan explores what information channels might have enabled Bachstrom to fabricate such a geneology, which, he seemed to have believed, would grant him access to the Ottoman ruling elite and its permission to publish the Bible in Ottoman Turkish. Artan argues that Bachstrom could have got some of his ideas from late-seventeenth century French Orientalist fiction and explores the sources of this particular literary genre.