English attitudes treated Ottomans as equals before Orientalism’s emergence

Evidence

Nabil Matar, who has written extensively on the relationship between Britain, Western Europe, and the Islamic Mediterranean, argues that English attitudes toward the Ottomans, whether as ally or enemy, always constructed the Muslim as equal. The Ottoman state was viewed as on par with England if not superior to it and other European states. Orientalism based on a notion of a superior Europe and an inferior Orient had not yet emerged, not least because it made no sense given the grandeur and advances of Muslim empires both in the Near East and South Asia. If anything, the Muslim empires had superior accomplishments in comparison to their Western European counterparts both in this period and during the Middle Ages more generally, and many Muslim authors wrote of Europe’s backwardness. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 110

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Contradicts the common assumption that Orientalist superiority discourse was timeless; connects to Said’s Orientalism timeline and to the notion that empire predates the prejudice.
• SEED: Angle: ‘Who was the colonizer before colonialism?’ — how 16th-century English feared Ottoman expansion into Europe, inverting the standard white-Europe-on-top story.
• QUESTION: When exactly did the shift occur — what historical event flipped English views of Turks from equal/fear to inferior Orient?

Related

• Europeans regarded Ottomans as equals before Orientalism’s hierarchy emerged (similarity 0.93)
• British views of Ottomans mixed fear and awe without colonial designs (similarity 0.90)
• Muslims were constructed as equals only while their empires could not be dominated (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalist racial hierarchy of Muslims required European military superiority to arise (similarity 0.84)
• The Ottomans, not England, were the expansionist imperial power in the 1500s-1600s (similarity 0.83)
• Stereotyping of Muslims was constrained by England’s inability to challenge the Ottomans (similarity 0.83)
• Europeans’ sense of superiority over Muslims shifted from religious to cultural grounds across centuries (similarity 0.82)
• Europeans recognized Ottomans as diplomatic equals, not colonial targets (similarity 0.82)
• Islamic Orientalism resisted internal critique while cognate fields engaged it. (similarity 0.82)
• Seventeenth-century Europeans did not yet dream of dominating the Muslim East (similarity 0.82)
• Europeans once considered the Ottomans ethnically European (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalist scholarship mounted political and ideological edges rather than neutral knowledge (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christian anti-Muslim discourse preceded Said’s orientalism by centuries (similarity 0.81)
• Eighteenth-century Europeans ranked Islam as a civilization on par with Christendom (similarity 0.81)
• Early Orientalists had to disavow Islam’s influence to remain acceptable to Europe (similarity 0.80)