Is There a Turk in the Turkish Spy?

Is There a Turk in the Turkish Spy!Virginia H. Aksan Mahmut me Arabian and vilest of the Grand Seignior's slaves, to Hasnadarbassy, Chief Treasurer to his Highness at Constantinople: "I have at length finish'd my journey [description of itinerary] ... I have suffered my hair to grow a little below my ears; and as to my lodging, 'tis in the house of an old Flemming, where my room is so small, that jealousie itself can scarce enter. ... Being of low stature, of an ill-favoured countenance, ill shap'd, and by nature not given to talkativeness, I shall the better conceal myself. ... I make two figures, being in heart what I ought to be; but outwardly and in appearance what I never intend."1 So begins the first letter ofMahmut the Arabian, alias Titus the Moldavian Cleric, alias L'Esploratore Turco, L'Espion Turc, or the Turkish Spy for the Ottoman court in Paris. The fame of L'Espion turc, or, Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, first of the satirical, epistolary spy "novels" that formed such an integral part of eighteenth-century French and English intellectual life, rests largely on its having been a model for Montesquieu's Lettres persanes of 1721.2 For the purposes of this paper, the Turkish Spy 1 The Eight Volumes ofLetters Writ by a Turkish Spy, Who Lived Five and Forty Years, Undiscover 'd at Paris (London: Printed for H. Rhodes, D. Brown, R. Sare, J. Nicholson, B. Tooke, and G. Strahan, 1718), 1:1, letter 1 (dated 1637). The McMaster University Library copy to which I refer throughout appears to be a made-up set. Vol. 1 (call number B1660) is identified as the 19th edition; vols 2-8 (call numbers B 1661-7) are called the 7th edition (vols 5-6 bear the publication date 1717). See ESTC n036604 for vols. 2-8. 2 See especially William H. McBurney, "The Authorship of the Turkish Spy," PMLA 72 (1957), 915-16. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 6, Number 3, April 1994 202 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION will also serve as the focus for a discussion of the process of factualization of the Orient and the merging, as Henri Laurens describes it, of "Orient scientifique" and "Orient romanesque"3 in a new version of the East as the seat of despotism. The discourse of the Turkish Spy, published at a moment when Europe, particularly France, was engaged in a debate about the nature of good government, brings together a wide range of information about the Orient and offers both admiration and criticism of the two great absolutisms, French and Turkish. By merging political and literary evidence, it also makes an innovative assumption about the ability of a popular audience to draw its own conclusions.4 The publishing history and authorship of the Turkish Spy have proved an elusive puzzle. Volume 1 in Italian was first published in Paris in 1683 by Jean Paul Maraña, a refugee from Genoa at the court of Louis xiv.5 That was immediately followed by a French version, L'Espion du grand seigneur (1684-86), in three volumes and 102 letters—also credited to Maraña—which in various editions had reached nine volumes by 1756. An expanded English version, in eight volumes and 600 letters, entitled Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, first made its appearance from 1687-94. Thereafter the bibliographical history of the work becomes decidedly murky, with "pirated" editions in Amsterdam and Cologne, and much rearrangement, exclusion, and inclusion of old and new letters, published all over Europe. Discussion about authorship, numbers of letters, and who stole what from whom assumes a decidedly nationalistic cast, with claimants periodically surfacing for either English or French authorship of the bulk of the approximately 500 letters beyond Maraña's original 102.6 The 1718 eight-volume expanded English edition has been used for this discussion, one of at least ten, and possibly more than twentysix editions published between 1687 and 1801 in England,7 where it 3 Henri Laurens, Les Origines intellectuelles de l'expédition d'Egypte: l'orientalisme islamisant en France (1698-1798) (Istanbul: Isis, 1987), p. 10. 4 Dena Goodman suggests that...