There was little Grelot would not attempt in order to ingratiate himself with Louis, but even he set limits to the risks he would take. The king, in the course of his third conversation with the obsequious artist, had tested those limits: "This his most Christian Majesty most perfectly understood, and therefore as I had the honour to be discours'd by him three times concerning my Travels, one time among the rest he ask'd me with a smile, whether I had not found out a way to get into those private parts sometimes" (Grelot, Eng., 78).²³ The harem of course was the site of fascination for the West precisely because it was so off-limits and (therefore) so sexually charged. Grelot deflected the Royal question with humor. Even for his king, the artist was not prepared to take such a risk, and lose, said he -- his religion, or his penis, or his life

       Although Grelot was not himself prepared to take the risk, he recommended that a potentially successful infiltrator might be a young man disguised as a female servant-companion to a Jewish woman of the sort occasionally permitted to enter the harem and sell trinkets to the women (Grelot, Fr., 93). He had obviously given the venture some thought before demurring. And, like a conscientious tourist, he wanted to impart travel tips for his successors. He was also cognizant of other travelers' reports, and did not hesitate to refer the reader to their expertise: "One would do much better to read Monsieur Tavernier's book The Interior of the Seraglio, where he amply satisfies even the greatest curiosity."²⁴ What this anecdote points up is that, while competing with one another to produce the most path-breaking, compelling and complete reports on this part of the world, travelers also understood at some level that they were engaged collectively in a statist project of information-gathering that exceeded any one of their individual contributions. This consciousness of participation in a shared proto-anthropological project would emerge as a disciplinary feature of the travel corpus as genre.

       With regard to competition, in his introduction, Grelot explains that the reason he decided to do drawings of the city had not so much to do with his talent, as to do with the fact that it was one of the few things that hadn't been done:

So many Relations of the Levant have been publish'd to the World, and the curious have been so well satisfy'd in what concerns that part of the Earth, that a man does but expose himself to censure, who shall presume to believe he makes anything oublick that is not already sufficiently known. So that all the modern relations of the Eastern Travellers being no more than repetitious, I deferr'd some years after my return to publish what I had done, for no other reason than to preserve the Ideas of the most remarkable things which I had seen in my Travells. I observed in all the Relations which I read, that the chiefest part of the remarks which I had made, were almost the same with what several famous travellers had done before me, and that therefore I should run the hazard of being look'd upon as a Copier, or a Plagiarie from others. But at length finding that none of all the numerous Relations which have appear'd in the world have afforded so much satisfaction of several that have honour'd me with their friendship, to cause some of the Platforms and Draughts which I had taken in the East to be engrav'd. (The Author to the Reader).²⁵

[Fig. 10]

[Fig. 11]

[figs. 10 and 11 engravings showing Mosque of Ayasofya]

        This passage recalls to us Grelot's earlier praise of Constantinople, almost identical to Thévenot's (publ. 1665) and D'Arvieux's (publ. 1735), all cited earlier. Grelot's concern, expressed above, attests to the regular, but at least here 'self-conscious' borrowings that travelers still engaged in, qualms regarding plagiarism notwithstanding, when they set about writing down their memoirs. Thus, both a competitive -- in the desire to make a novel and complete contribution -- and a participatory -- in the awareness of adding to a growing corpus -- spirit mark the artist's approach to his project.

       As if to compensate for his inability to satisfy the king's curiosity regarding the harem, Grelot proceeds immediately following this admission of failure to describe his success in penetrating into the almost equally sacred and inaccessible, and highly contested space, by his account , of the former church of Hagia Sophia or the mosque of Ayasofya -- a "lieu de mémoire" par excellence. Here he sets aside for awhile his attempts at ingratiating and amusing, and launches into a serious architectural study of the building where his expertise speaks eloquently for itself.²⁶

[Fig. 12]

[Fig. 13]

[Fig. 14]

[Fig. 15]

[Figs. 12, 13, 14 and 15 architectural map of floor plan of Mosque and key]

       Like a knowledgeable art historian, he first offers a brief history of the beginning of Justinian's church with the laying of the cornerstone by Constantine, who had also laid the foundation for Saint Peter's in Rome (81). This founding story, as he tells it, establishes this edifice as rightly a Western, Christian one, and authorizes the French king to reclaim it. He then recounts its complicated history, more a martyrdom: two burnings, the difficulty with buttressing the immense dome, the building's susceptibility to earthquakes, its taking by the Ottomans (another 'natural' disaster?).

       At this point, Grelot proceeds with a carefully keyed architectural description of the building -- measures, proportions, materials, functions, etc.. Here he displays his attention to detail as artist himself, capable of appreciating in the greatest depth and to the finest point the features of the Hagia Sophia. With his verbal detail describing the interior, he completes the knowledge available from the engravings.

       Again and again Grelot refers to the building as a "Church," claiming that it has been "defaced" by the Turks. As he shifts to describe the interior in its current state, he gives a brief story of how Mehmet II broke down the altar when he took the church from the Christians and dedicated it to his "false Mahomet" (96). In fact, the only major change introduced into the building at that time was the installation of the niche (the "minbar" and the "mihrab") in the southeast corner where the Koran was placed so that people would know to pray in the direction of Mecca, and the whitewashing of the figural mosaics of the lower interior walls.²⁷ Unlike the city which, as we have seen, has gone by many names, the building keeps its core name -- the Hagia Sofia or the Ayasofya; she has a more constant and sure identity, even if, or perhaps for the very reason that, hers is a specifically contested site. Occupants may come and go, but she stays.

[Fig. 16]

[Fig. 17]

[Figs. 16 and 17 engravings of interior of the Mosque]

       Although the verbal framing Grelot offers as supplement to his artwork often completes and assists in appreciation of the visual material, much of it seems gratuitous. The flippant text jars with the reverently rendered images. If Grelot is at all conflicted in his feelings toward Constantinople -- torn between esthetic admiration and political calculation, it is in the gap between image and text that his ambivalence can be read. Nevertheless, in the text's totality, it lends weight, volume, and hence importance, to his engravings that otherwise, on their own, might not have captured the royal attention they seek. Loose or bound only together, they would have appeared a slim offering. If a picture is worth a thousand words, perhaps those thousand words are necessary nonetheless to frame and anchor the picture to advantage.

       In order to attach even greater value to his engravings of the mosque, compensating all the while for not providing the desired pictures of the harem interior, Grelot will tell at length how difficult and dangerous it was for him to gain entry to the mosque, how he had to disguise himself, use his wits, and bribe his way through. He will also indicate that pictures of the interior of the mosque were an express desire of Louis, and that two other French travelers, commanded to provide these, had not dared expose themselves to the risk (110). In this way, he substitutes penetration into this forbidden space for the other, even more daunting, of the harem. Therefore he doubly dedicates these particular engravings to his king: he is not simply offering his book generally but seeking to satisfy a specific royal request where other subjects had failed. Here risk should translate directly into merit. For Grelot: a disguise, much negotiation and great cleverness, some prized Venetian coins and a tempting watch, and finally the self-fashioning hero is in.

       We might expect Grelot to get to his business with dispatch, in fear and trembling, and to be out of there as quickly as possible, but where is the glory in such efficiency? At least according to his account, which we of course must read as a fiction, he is not satisfied to enter, sketch, and leave. Once having penetrated that sacred space, he will perform an audacious act that reclaims the mosque for the ousted Christians. Since he is not a priest, he cannot perform a mass and reconsecrate the space, so he will do the next best thing. He will desecrate the mosque. He will have his way with her.

       He signals that this was the season of Ramadan, when Muslims eat and drink nothing between sunrise and sundown. And further, it was not customary to eat or drink inside a mosque. Not only will he disrespect the practices of the local religious season, and disregard the conventions of place. In addition, he will flout the dietary rules of the Muslim religion: "Foreseeing that there would be some want of a little refreshment in regard I was not going to keep the Turkish Ramazan or Lent, but only to draw the draught of the Church, I carry'd with me a Bologna sawsage, a Bottle of Wine, and a Loaf. Which had been sufficient to cost me my dear life, had they found me eating Bacon and drinking Wine, the two abominations chiefly forbidden by their Law, and polluting with them the holyest of their Mosquees" (114).

       Grelot's picnic ingredients are not innocent: yes, they represented standard fare for the traveler, but they signify further. Bread and wine alone might have passed for symbolically sacramental and actually fitting for an act of desecration. But the additional forbidden sausage, also symbolically freighted, adds a distinctly obscene note to the menu. Was Grelot out to 'have his way' with the mosque?

       This flourish of bravado will be followed by tales of how he was almost caught several times over, how he feared for his life again and again, but how each time he managed to outwit the Turks. The story will take on greater and greater proportions; what had been "two abominations" will escalate to "three capital sins" which he revels in repeating: "It was a crime that neither stake nor fire could hardly have expiated, to find a Giaur making figures, eating Pork, and drinking Wine, in the Turks Holy of Holyes." (Eng., 115).²⁸ This may or may not have actually taken place; it hardly matters.

[Fig. 18]

[Fig. 19]

[Fig. 20]

[Fig. 21]

[Figs. 18, 19, 20, 21 engraving of prayer positions]

       What does matter is the act of desecration or 'taking' of the mosque that Grelot inscribes, in the name of his king's purported desire and for his own greater glory. He boasts to have outwitted the infidel in the name of mere (Christian, French, male) appetite. Grelot's inscribed speech act (fictional or not) stages a symbolic reclaiming of the Hagia Sophia for his "Christian Majesty," and, with the sausage, enacts s a sexually charged symbolic reclaiming.

       Grelot's behavior in and around the mosque can translate as a wardance performed in the name of Louis XIV. In these engravings, he has figuratively captured not only the mosque, but also the Turks in their sacred positions of worship, reducing their ritualized praying to posturing, to his own gestures on paper. Like their prophet, they too are "impostors." In addition to his other actions, here, in this sequence, he has transgressed the supposed Muslim taboo against figural representation in and around holy places, and this by drawing the likenesses of the very institutors of this taboo. In this way, beyond consuming bread, wine and especially sausage on the premises, he has put the Ottomans in their place. He, the king's vanguard, has captured the contested site and its guardians, and fixed the coup on copper plate. Here in this world of gendered geography, Grelot's penetration into the interdicted space of the contested but currently Muslim space, with his gleeful violation of Muslim mores, has performed a symbolic rape. If Ayasofya has fallen to this French artist, can Constantinople lag far behind for the king?

       And so when we think of artists traveling and drawing, we do well to consider the role they assign to themselves and to their work. Grelot did not attempt to ingratiate himself with the people of Constantinople except insofar as he needed their immediate cooperation for the success of his project. He had his eye only to the eventual royal reader back home.²⁹ In order to gain royal favor, he assumed his many actual and rhetorical roles, and deployed to advantage his skills as artist and raconteur. Ultimately, his self-appointed mission resulted in a triple act of conquest for himself. His strategies as military and artistic vanguard paid off. If only on paper, but thereby into his pocket and to his own greater glory, he captured Constantinople, the king, and a share of the market.³⁰ The next step was up to the king.

       While Grelot's attempt at figurally claiming Constantinople for Louis remained in the realm of the symbolic and went without actual immediate consequence, it reads as telling symptom of French desire and design. The Western male would have his way, and the East could be had for the taking. In recounting and depicting the world of the Ottoman capital for the king, Grelot contributed not so much to knowledge as to the positioning and fabricating of French identity. His artwork and text constitute nothing short of a symbolic rape of the woman mosque, a figurative conquest of fickle Constantinople, and, by extension, the Ottoman Empire, if not Islam. His images express a violent desire to establish French hegemony, to legitimize French religious orthodoxy, and to stimulate French capitalist expansion. Artistic acts such as his set the French notion of the function of the Islamic world of the "Other," specifically for the king's eye. And also the preferred mode of relating. Under the sacred aegis of art, Constantinople fell in 1680, and France took shape as France. At the same time, ironically, if we are to have any notion of the Ayasofya in the early modern period, we are left with little choice but to consult Grelot’s engravings.

23. "Cette dificulté dont sa Majesté Tres-Chretienne est parfaitement bien instruite, aussi-bien que de tout ce qu'il y a de plus secret dans le Serrail & dans toute la Turquie, l'obligea de me demander en souriant (lorsque j'eus pour la troisième fois l'honneur de l'entretenir de mes voyages,) si j'estois entré quelques fois dans cette partie du Serrail" (92).

24. My translation; this passage of Grelot's does not figure in the English edition, presumably because Tavernier had not yet been translated, and hence was not of interest to the English. The English editor may have wanted to give the impression that Grelot's account was not simply the only account available, but that it was the most complete: "On fera beaucoup mieux de s'en rapporter à ce qu'en a écrit Monsieur Tavernier dans son Livre intitulé l'Interieur du Serrail, où il satisfait abondamment aux doutes des plus curieux" (93). Indeed, in 1675, already five years before the publication of Grelot's book, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier had published his Nouvelle relation de l'interieur du serrail du Grand Seigneur: contenant plusieurs singularitez qui jusqu'icy n'ont point esté mises en lumière (Paris: Barbin, 1675), so it is clear that travelers were aware of one another's writings and their dissemination.

25. Fr.: "J'observois en toutes les Relations que je lisois, que la plûpart des remarques que j'avois faites estaoient presque semblables à ce que tant d'illustres Voyageurs avoient donné au Public devant moy; & qu'à moins de vouloir passer comme beaucoup d'autres, ou pour Copiste ou pour Plagiaire; je ne pouvois pas honnestement publier sous mon nom ce que plusieurs s'étoient déja attribuez. Mais enfin voyant que le grand nombre de Relations qui ont paru n'ont toutes ensemble donné pas un seul plan, élévation ou figure fidele de tout ce qui est décrit dans celle-cy. J'ay resolu pour satisaire àla curiosité de plusieurs personnes qui m'on fait l'honneur de m'aimer, de faire graver quelques-uns des Plans & Desseins que j'ay tirez dans le Levant (Au Lecteur)."

26. Here Grelot's accuracy retains credibility as his engravings are some of the sources used in the distinguished art historian Gülru Necipoglu's seminal article: "The Life of an Imperial Monument: Hagia Sophia after Byzantium," in Hagia Sophia from the Age of Justinian to the Present, edited by Robert Mark and Ahmet S. Cakmak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 195-225, recounting and analyzing the history of the edifice under Ottoman rule and into the present.

27. The mosaic figural representations of the interior walls were first partially whitewashed in the early seventeenth century, so that one could still discern the figures beneath; they were again whitewashed in the eighteenth century; in the nineteenth century they were completely cleaned, restored, but then covered up again, however in such a way as to ensure that their later uncovering would do no damage to them. See Nécipoglu: 211, 221.

28. "C'estoit me trouver dans un crime que le pal et le feu n'auroient pû expier, que de me rencontrer dans une Mosquée, y faisant des figures, beuvant du vin, & mangeant du porc, qui font les trois pechez capitaux contre la Loy Mahometane" (140). The Muslim taboo against figural representation in spaces of worship appears to have taken hold in the early seventeenth century since it is at this time that the mosaics in the Hagia Sophia were first whitewashed (Necipoglu, 217); the face of the Virgin was simply veiled and only the various angels remained visible (218).

29. See Volker Schröder, "Racine et l'éloge de la guerre de Hollande: de la campagne de Louis XIV au 'dessein' de Mithridate, Dix-septième siècle, no.198 (50e année, n.1, 1998): just as French artists would commemorate Louis XIV's victories in his 1672 Holland campaign by presenting him with drawings of the towns he had captured as souvenirs, so here Grelot performed the same gesture, but in anticipation and for purposes of enticement, 135.

30. (Eng.) The Publisher to the Reader: "The King of France was so pleased with these draughts, that he commanded the Author to make them publick, and gave him his Letters patents, strictly forbidding any to invade his propriety, by copying them after him."