Were there many romantic liasons between nobles from the Ottoman Empire and Europe in general or were the cultural/religous/political differences too much for the time?

by [deleted]
NouvelleHeloise

When Louis XIV made the Ottoman Empire an ally, he was criticised all over Europe by politicians and intellectuals who thoughts his decision unbecoming a Christian monarch ; later during the reign of Louis XV, the statesman and diplomat the Comte de Vergennes married a woman of Turkish extraction and his career was severely hampered for a long time and he was ridiculed by courtiers. Many Ottoman nobles kept European mistresses or took European or Meditterean wives, but they were usually of a lower status. There's no record of this being reciprocated in the West - I think people were haughtier and, to an extent, looked down on the cultural and religious habits of their Ottoman counterparts; in Diderot's Encyclopaedia, the entry on the Koran was thus : 'The book of the Muhammadan...pretend revelations and the doctrine of the fake (or false) Mohammed.'

AxisXYZ

In Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Letters - her firsthand account of living in the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 1710s - she points out at least one. Montagu's husband was the ambassador in the Empire and she recalls meeting one noblewoman from Italy married to a Turkish nobleman. Montagu calls the woman "Lucretia" and notes that she was kidnapped by this nobleman during a raid in Italy. Then he either raped her or had consensual sex - it's not especially clear. The intention was to ransom her back to her family and, in fact, they paid up - except Lucretia had no intention of leaving since she was fond of either the Turk or Constantinople or both. The Turk sent back the ransom to the family with thanks and said he would be much happier with his new wife.

If I recall correctly, Montagu cites the romantic nature of this nobleman and less strict gender roles in the Ottoman Empire as reasons for the Lucretia's decision to stay.