Chorwackie spotkania z kulturą islamu w dziewiętnastowiecznym podróżopisarstwie. We władzy stereotypów

Abstract

In the article, the accounts of encounters with Islam culture contained in the travelogues of Matija Mažuranić, Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski, Mihovil Pavlinović and Adolf Veber Tkalčević are analysed. The aforementioned authors were traveling around the Ottoman Bosnia and Turkey. In their texts, the perceiving of the Orient culture is determined by the ideological or personal motivations of the authors along with a highly emphasized belonging of Croatia to the Christian world of the West. The confrontation of the cultural self-identification with the notion of Islamic strangeness/hostility/wildness does not allow the travelers to snatch themselves from the dominion of dichotomic divisions and stereotypes as well as from the Orientalist point of view, which in extreme cases deprives Islam believers of their humanity. Inhumane or human not enough, the representative of the foreign values is regarded as a creator of the impure and dangerous reality, therefore, he needs to prevent himself from himself namely, to assimilate into (the Western) civilization.