European travel writers fabricated accounts of places they never entered

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: Direct primary-source evidence for the Said thesis that Western travel writing constructed the Orient from imagination and exclusion — Montagu names the mechanism (gender-segregated access denied, so authors invented).
• ADDENDUM: Supports the reader’s existing cluster on Islam-West representation by giving a 1717 eyewitness indictment of fabricated Orientalist travelogues.
• QUESTION: Montagu herself was exceptional in having female access — how did her account differ from male travelers’ fictions?
• CANDY: A vivid quote ideal for sharing: ‘accounts of the women which ‘tis certain they never saw’.