Coğrafya 19

Geography is a science which if properly used may give us the most accurate picture of the world or part of it, not only now but also in the past. In this sense geography is a historical science. In that sense we argue that geographical information in books or journals could be valuable, though usually ignored, sources of details concerning the image of “the other” in a context close to the notion of otherness as has been proposed by M. Bakhtin. In fact, Greek geography books of the 18thth centuries could be used as vehicles for a dialogue between the Christian and Muslim populations in the Ottoman Empire during the aforementioned period. In the present paper we aim to give an account of the way Islam and the Ottoman Empire is described in the Greek geography books before and after the establishment of the independent Greek state. We argue that through this comparison we may understand not only the value of geography as a discipline but also the role that textbooks of geography and maps can play in the rhetoric, political and ideological, in different periods and how sometimes the content of such books is based not only on scientific data but also on interpretations related to the political situation.