Travel Essentials: Nature as Represented in Ottoman Route Manuals (Menzilnames)

This study explores textual and visual representations of nature in the Ottoman Empire by focusing on Ottoman route manuals (menzilname or menzil books). Menzil books are a subgenre within the travel literature that systematically records various information about the condition of the route and way stations, landscape, plants, vegetation, animals, food and water supplies. Hence, this study examines ten exemplary route manuals written in Turkish by Ottoman subjects between the 16th and 19th centuries covering pilgrimage journeys, military expeditions, and official journeys for various purposes to reflect the wide variety of their content in terms of period and imagined interlocutor. It starts by defining the term “menzil” and continues by scrutinizing the textual and visual reflections of “nature” in aspects of landscape, flora, and fauna of the selected corpus. It argues that these route manuals’ textual and visual depictions of nature aim to provide the reader and future traveler with practical information rather than to provoke an aesthetic sensation or record a scientific description.