Thread by @kamilkazani

I have no idea. Mosca's works on Qing diplomacy indicate that early Manchu rulers made direct parallels between the Qing and the Ottomans. In his letter to another Manchu prince, the emperor Qianlong described China as one of great empires similar to the Mughals and the Ottomans

Two things are interesting about this letter. First of all, it's written in Manchu. Indeed, one of major points of the New Qing historiography is that the self-representation of the Qing rulers varied greatly depending on the language they were writing on

When writing in Chinese Qianlong and others acted in accordance with the Confucian tradition, presenting themselves as traditional Chinese rulers. But their Manchu-writteb texts make a completely different impression, more of an Inner Asia rather than traditionally Chinese empire

Furthermore, the terminology is also interesting. Qianlong addressed the Ottomans as the Khungar (a Kalmyk term). He had no direct contact and no direct knowledge of them but rather perceived them through the lenses of Mongol intermediaries acting in the same Inner Asian space

I would highly recommend this book for putting both the Qing diplomacy and their self representation (and self image) into a broader context

That's an outline of what the Qing knew of the Ottomans and how they conceptualised them:

Mosca, Matthew W. "Empire and the circulation of frontier intelligence: Qing conceptions of the Ottomans." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (2010): 147-207

The end. This is not a thread