Ottoman consular registers systematically recorded foreign commercial activity from 1567.

Evidence

The most important source of infor­ mation of this subject is the series of registers called Du¨vel-i ecnebiye defterleri— registers of foreign states. There are 106 volumes classified by states and running from 1567 to 1914. This series deals not with diplomatic but with consular and commercial affairs. … Volume 9, labelled miscellaneous, contains reports, decrees, and rul­ ings on specific cases involving British subjects. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1986

Categorization

• XREF: Evidence on how the Ottoman bureaucracy produced its own documentary ledger of foreigners — relevant to reciprocal (not one-sided) knowledge production versus Western archives that Said scholarship tends to foreground.