Journey to the Sublime Porte. The Arabic Memoir of a Sharifian Agent's Diplomatic Mission to the Ottoman Imperial Court in the era of Suleyman the Magnificent Qutb al-D�al-Nahraw�'s al-Faw�d al-san�h f�l-rihlah al-Madan� wa al-R�m�h. Beiruter Texte und Studien (BTS) Band 109.

Late in 1557 Shaykh Qutb al-Din al-Nahrawali, a Meccan religious figure, was sent by the Sharif of Mecca to Istanbul to plead in the Imperial Council of State for the removal of a local Ottoman official. The object of the mission and its failure are less important than al-Nahrawali's diary-like memoir of the journey which yields rich information on the Ottoman heartlands, capital and court in what is held to have been the heyday of the empire. Accompanying the returning Syrian pilgrimage caravan as far as Damascus, where it wintered over for two months, his small party then crossed Anatolia to the Bosphorus. Along the way he met with Prince Bayezid, who sought his support against his brother, the future Sultan Selim II. Once in the capital, where his two-month sojourn accounts for a quarter of the diary, he met with Rustem Pasha, the powerful grand vizier, had audiences with Sultan Suleyman I (the Magnificent) and with Abu al-Su'ud Efendi, the empire's celebrated chief religious official, and witnessed the funeral procession of Hurrem (Roxelana), Suleyman's influential consort. He returned by sea to Alexandria, and from Cairo he accompanied the Egyptian pilgrimage caravan to Mecca. The value of this mission memoir to scholarship is substantial. For example, it reveals aspects of life in the Ottoman heartlands and at the sultan's capital and court Through it we gain insight into the reception, deportment and behind-the-scenes activities of a lobbyist at work to achieve a modest goal which kept him remote from his home for a year. It allows one to trace the routes and study the way stations of both the Syrian and the Egyptian caravans for the annual pilgrimage a central Islamic rite and within one Islamic calendar year. And its author's concern to remain within budget affords an opportunity to study his accounts, the cost of food, services and pack animals, etc., and the various currencies in use and where. But equally fascinating to the reader is the work's considerable corpus of trivia, all of which contributes to our appreciation of 16th-century Muslim Ottoman society. Einband berieben, einige Bleistiftanstreichungen im Text. ISBN 3899134419