A woman traveller in ottoman lands: Lady Hester Stanhope and her observations on the Ottoman Empire

The East, which is defined as a mysterious and intriguing place by Europeans, has been visited by western travelers coming for various purposes in different periods of history. These travelers recorded and wrote their observations about places that they traveled to which shed light on their social, political and military life, which was not mentioned in the official sources of the period that they were in. Lady Hester Stanhope, who came to the Ottoman lands in the 19th century and lived there for about thirty years, is one of the travelers who visited the East. Although there isn't any source written by the traveler about her own life and observations in the Ottoman Empire; her personal physician, Charles Meryon, who accompanied her throughout travels and with whom he was together until her death, filled this gap with the work he wrote about the lady. In our study we discuss our findings in three sections, based on the six-volume work on Lady Hester. In the first section we discuss the traveler's family, character, the life of religion and thought and her death in the first chapter; the route she traveled in the Ottoman Empire is examined in chronological order in the second one. In the last section, evaluations of the social, cultural, political and religious life of the Ottoman people are given based on the observations of Lady Hester Stanhope and her Doctor Charles Meryon.