Ottoman writers recognized European discoveries as threats to Islamic trade by 1580

Evidence

The Ottomans were well aware of the issues at stake. In a book written in about 1580, describing the European voyages of discovery and the New World, an Ottoman geographical writer warns the Sultan of the dangers to the Islamic lands and the disturbance to Islamic trade resulting from the discoveries, and suggests: “Let a channel be cut from the Mediterranean to Suez, and let a great fleet be prepared in the port of Suez; then, with the capture of the ports of India and Sind, it will be easy to chase away the infidels and bring the precious wares of those places to our capital… .” The same or similar ideas may also be found in other Ottoman writers of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 597

Categorization

• XREF: Corroborates scholarship on ‘Islamic counter-Orientalism’ and the Ottomans’ own historical imagination of Western discovery — relevant to the reader’s Said-adjacent cluster.
• SEED: Article angle: the proposed Suez canal in Ottoman geographies of 1580 reframes European ‘discovery’ narratives as a two-way contest over trade routes and information, centuries before the actual canal.