Orientalism on the Margins The Ottoman Empire under Russian Eyes VICTOR TAKI Throughout its modern history, Russia was more frequently at war with the Ottoman Empire than with any other power. Russo-Ottoman wars took place between the late 17th and the late 19th centuries and were paralleled by other forms of contact, including captivity, religious pilgrimages, diplomacy, and later tourism and scientific exploration.' The intensity of this interaction is reflected in the voluminous literature about the Ottoman Empire that was published in Russian before 1917.^ Russian and translated Western accounts of captivity, religious and secular travelogues, memoirs, and statistical descriptions are note- worthy not only because they were numerous, but because before the (remark- ably late) appearance of osmanistika as a separate branch of Orientalist science devoted to Ottoman Turkey, these nonscholarly writings contained the quasi- totality of Russian knowledge about the rival empire.^ Aimed at a wide audience. The author would like to thank the Special Program Eastern Europe of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, whose generous support (Grant no. AZ 21/SR/08) facilitated research for this article. The author is also deeply grateful to Alex Martin and to the anonymous reviewers, whose com- ments helped improve the argument. One could, of course, extend the chronology of Russo-Ottoman wars in both directions by mentioning Selim IFs campaign against Astrakhan in 1569, the capture of Azov by the Don Cossacks in 1637, or the military actions in Transcaucasia in 1914—17. Nevertheless, the ten Russo-Turkish wars that took place between 1676 and 1878 stand out. They occurred every 15-30 years, were waged primarily in European Turkey, and were justified more or less explicidy by the idea of liberating the Balkan Christians. ^ Bibliograflia Turtsii (1713-1917) (Moscow: Izdatel'srvo Vostochnoi literatury, 1961) lists over 4,000 items, the majority of which are of a nonscholarly nature. From the mid-1820s on, Ottoman Turkish was continuously taught to prospective staff of Russian diplomatic missions at the Education Section of Oriental Languages of the Asiatic Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; see B. M. Dantsig, Izuchenie Blizhnego Vostoka v Rossii (XlX-nachalo XX vv.) (Moscow: Nauka, 1968), 83-85. In the first half of the 19th century, the language was also taught continuously at Kazan University by A. K. Kazembek and I. N. Berezin, and somewhat intermittently at St. Petersburg University by O. I. Senkovskii, Dzhafar Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, 2 (Spring 2011): 321-51.