A Travel Guide to India for Ottoman Merchants: On Meḥmed Emīn Efendi’s Taḳrīr

Meḥmed Emīn Efendi’s Taḳrīr is considered to be the second oldest extant Ottoman text on India that has been found to date after Seydī ‘Alī Reis’ famous travelogue Mir’ātu’l-Mamālik (The Mirror of Countries). Meḥmed Emīn was only twenty one years old at time of his visit to India and was accompanying his father Yağlıḳçı Yūsuf Ağa who later became the chief Ottoman envoy to Mughal Empire after the chief envoy Sālim Efendi passed away during the journey. Written upon Meḥmed Emīn’s arrival from the Indian Subcontinent in 1749, the text itself is too packed with detailed descriptions and particularly gives us a wide range of information about the Indian Subcontinent from daily rules of conduct to bureacratic practices. There might be two hypotheses for the reason why the text was written: one hypothesis is that the text might have been written as a travel guide for Ottoman merchants who might go to India for trading purposes. The background of Sālim Efendi and Yāğlıḳçı Yūsuf Ağa as well as the practical and informative nature of the text supports this claim. My second hypothesis is that Meḥmed Emīn might have written this short Taḳrīr as a way to make his way into Ottoman bureacracy. This hypothesis seems very plausible as well, simply because after coming from India, Meḥmed Emīn starts working in the Scribes’ Office of the Grand Vizierate (Ṣadāret Mektubī Ḳalemi) upon the composition of this short text. In addition, after working in the government for twenty years, Meḥmed Emīn also becomes a grand vizier between the dates of October 1768 and August 1769 for nine months during the reign of Muṣṭafa III.