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determined, for the first time, systematically to show the Ottoman world to the West, faithfully illustrating the text so that word and image told the same story in a General Picture [Tableau général] of the Ottoman Empire, Divided into Two Parts, of which One Contains the Muhammadan Legislation, the Other the History of the Ottoman Empire. This aim was born out of frustration. Half-Armenian, half-French, Catholic, born an Ottoman subject, and spending his life until middle age in the Ottoman domains, he was increasingly angered by the plethora of books and images that failed to portray that world as he knew it. In his preamble (Discours préliminaire) he was very precise about his intention. Other authors, he declared, had only looked at the surface of this vast state, “without understanding the [underlying] causes. Illusions and error result from these distant, superficial and fleeting perspectives.” This misapprehension had serious consequences. “Absolute ignorance” and “barbarism,” said d’Ohsson, were the usual epithets applied in Europe to the Ottomans. In reality he was even more of an enthusiast for the empire than most Muslim Ottomans. One, Ebu Bekir Ratib, Ottoman ambassador to Vienna in 1792, wrote that “God knows, he is so zealous for the Sublime State that if I say [he is] more so than we [are], I would not be speaking falsely.”37

D’Ohsson’s ambition for his project knew no bounds. His book was to be published by the royal press, the Imprimerie de Monsieur, using the finest printers in Paris, run by the Didot family. The engravings were to be carried out by Charles-Nicolas Cochin, the best practitioner of the day. The three elephant folio volumes, and the seven smaller octavo volumes of the “popular” edition, contained only the smaller part of his vaunting vision.38 Carter Findley described this as “a vast never-to-be-completed survey of Islamic and pre-Islamic history, from ancient Egypt and Iran to the Mongols; this was to be followed by a history of the Ottoman Empire [from distant origins to 1774], and then—this part being the Tableau général—the legislation of the Ottoman Empire.”39 Thus, only one aspect of the grand plan ever emerged into print in its full glory. Reading it now, it seems like a precursor (in publishing terms) of the grandest publication of the nineteenth century: the French imperial Description of Egypt (Description de l’Egypte). D’Ohsson’s first two huge volumes, published in the late 1780s, must have been known to Napoleon as he planned to immortalize his own entry into Egypt in 1798–9.

For almost two centuries “M. de M*** d’Ohsson” has seemed as romantic and mysterious a character as Alexander Dumas’ count of Monte Cristo. Was the baron d’Ohsson really the descendant of an ancient Swedish noble family, or was he simply an Armenian trader who worked in the Swedish embassy in Constantinople? He was the son of Oannes Mouradgea, an Ottoman Armenian in the service of the Swedish consulate in Izmir, and Claire Pagy, the daughter of a French consular clerk in the same port. In 1740 Ignatius was born in Pera, a European quarter of Constantinople across the Golden Horn. He followed his father and became a translator to the Swedish embassy in 1763; by 1768 he was chief translator. He was appointed chargé d’affaires in 1795, and later briefly held the highest post in the Constantinople embassy, head of mission.

An advantageous marriage to the daughter of a rich Armenian merchant banker, Abraham Kuliyan, had financed a style of life far beyond his income as a translator. By 1780, Ignatius was also in business with his father-in-law, as well as working for the embassy. In 1786, the king of Sweden allowed him to change his name in honor of an uncle who had shown him “paternal kindness.” This figure was, it seemed, conveniently called d’Ohsson, an imaginative rendering by Ignatius of his uncle’s Armenian patronymic Tosunyan, which meant, roughly, “raging bull.” This francophone appellation carried him a long way. In 1780, he was given a Swedish title of nobility, and he progressed from “le sieur