Paper short abstract:

Taking A Traveler in Europe by the Ottoman writer Ahmed Midhat (1844 - 1912), a non-canonical European travel text on Europe and the Parisian Exposition Universelle, 1889, I particularly focus on his remarks about Muslim women and gender in the case of la rue du Caire.

Paper long abstract:

Ahmed Midhat, a bureaucrat, novelist, journalist, Orientalist, and a cosmopolitan cultural broker of the 19th-century Ottoman-Istanbul, speaks to a transition period in which modernization was discussed to "save" the declining empire. In A Traveler in Europe (1890), a non-canonical European travel text, he presents his remarks about morality, Muslim women, and gender at the Parisian Exposition Universelle. While he is fascinated by discourses of development, modernity, and Paris as "civilized" city-space; he is not free of greater quandaries about the morality of the "European" culture, revealing a position on Europe and Europeanization with an interesting twist.

Liberally depicting urban Cairene architectural styles on the 150m2 area behind Palais de l'Industrie, Delort de Gléon claimed for the exactitude of la rue du Caire and argued for its "authenticity." As an Orientalist, Ahmed Midhat was attentive to la rue du Caire and described the spectacle beset with shops and musicians, male and female dancers, artisans, and donkey drivers. Yet, he criticized its presentation and argued that not the magnificent display of items, objects, and architecture, but the female dancers lured visitors to the Street. It is true that la rue du Caire is a "contact zone," in Mary Louise Pratt's terms, It is a transcultural site, but one that reinforces prejudices about Europe and the Orient on Ahmed Midhat, rather than reconciling them. In the end, Ahmed Midhat produces stereotypes both about the Orient and about the West; and about women, about morals, and, certainly, about himself.