European travel accounts of the Levant were written without ever seeing what they described.

Evidence

Let me conclude with a warning from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, from a letter written in 1717. She is replying to a letter from a friend, and she says: “Your whole letter is full of mistakes, from one end to the other. I see you have taken your ideas of Turkey from that worthy author, Dumont, who has writ with equal ignorance and confidence. ‘Tis a particular pleasure to me here [in Istanbul, where she was writing] to read the voyages to the Levant, which are generally so far removed from truth, and so full of absurdities I am very well diverted with them. They never fail giving you an account of the women which ‘tis certain they never saw, and talking very wisely of the genius of the men into whose company they were never admitted, and often describe Mosques which they dare not peep into.” — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 797

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Said’s Orientalism thesis about Western knowledge of the East being constructed from ignorance and stereotype; also to the earlier chapter’s account of how Western travelers reported on the region.
• SHARE: A perfect quote to send to anyone working on travel writing or Orientalism — Montagu’s mockery of male travelers who describe harems and mosques they never entered.