Exoticism--the inherent interest of the exotic, non-European culture. For the 18th century, one can't overlook the influence of French culture in the dissemination of turqueries, driving elite and popular taste across Europe. The French scandalously concluded an alliance with the Ottoman Empire in 1536 that lasted until Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, giving France a near monopoly on trade. In the 18th century you have events like the reception of the Turkish ambassador at the French court in 1721, which sparked a wave of popular interest in things Ottoman, influencing high and decorative arts, literature, theatre, music. The opera-ballet L'Europe galante in 1697 featured a turkish seraglio; Galland's French translation of Thousand and One Nights (1704-1717) which was massively influential and rapidly translated across Europe, Montesquieu's Persian Letters (1721), Voltaire Mahomet and Zadig, etc. etc--all testify to an artistic and intellectual fascination that would reverberate across Europe. This kind of orientalism was very similar to chinoiserie--a kind of decorative exoticism that was not primarily political (except when, in the case of Montesquieu's Persian Letters, the image of the foreigner was used as a vehicle to critique French society, and thus is more about Europe than about the Ottoman Empire). Instead, this was an aesthetic and intellectual phenomenon.