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Abu Ayyub was a companion of the Prophet Muhammad and his tomb, built in the place he died in 684, came to provide the sanctification of Istanbul and its ruling Ottoman dynasty following the conquest of the city in 1453
The "traveler to Türkiye" featured here is Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, who passed away due to illness. Though the exact date is unknown, it has been suggested that he could have died in the years 669, 670, 672 or 675. In terms of this series, he is a figure of firsts. He is the first in it to come from the East, the first Muslim, and the first to die in Türkiye, which, as will be seen, is of great consequence. In terms of his selection, he is also a first. I have chosen this piece to come out in the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, and I have also, for the first time, selected the figure with a specific rather than a general audience in mind.
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Lord Byron's admiration for Ali Pasha and the Albanians during his trip to what is now Türkiye in 1810 is critical to understanding his attitude toward Turks, as his Hellenophilia did not imply he was anti-Turkish, but his general attitude of Byron toward Turks and Türkiye was indeed a positive one
In 1824, Lord George Gordon Byron died in what is now the Greek town of Missolonghi. At the time, it and the surrounding area were being fought over in the Greek War of Independence, and Byron had come there to support the Greeks in this struggle. Rather than a heroic death in battle, though, a fever caught in the insalubrious environment killed him. With his death at the age of only 36, he was the last of the second generation of English Romantic poets, following John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, who all died young in the Mediterranean region, outlived by once radical poets of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge from the first generation of Romantics who had by then had safely and securely settled into their middle-aged conservatism.
Since he had traveled east in 1823 to fight the Ottomans and as he remains today honored by the Greeks for whom he took up arms - Vyron, the Greek form of Byron, is still a popular male name in Greece today - it might be imagined that Byron is what the Turks call "a Türk düşmanı," a term that can be rendered into English as Turcophobe.
Thus for his 1810 trip, it might be wondered whether, for the sixth in this series of famous travelers to Türkiye, Byron is to be the first representative who disliked the country. As far as Istanbul goes, the answer is a qualified yes. Of course, there is undoubtedly no strong reason why a series on travelers to Türkiye or any other country should only contain people who find the place agreeable. Yet Byron is not included here as the first "Türk düşmanı" of the series. The general attitude of Byron toward Turks and Türkiye is, as shall be seen, a positive one.
Indeed, Byron's indubitable Hellenophilia does not mean he was, or ought to have been, anti-Turkish, for there is no compelling reason why a foreign traveler should assume the traditional enmities of places they like. For a visitor to this region, a fondness for Türkiye or Greece need not be mutually exclusive any more than it would be expected that an Ottoman visitor to England in Byron's time need take on a hatred of France.
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