I recently published, on YouTube, a video of my reading chapter 13 of
The Innocents Abroad.  It received a comment of some degree of
astonishment on the degree of dislike Twain held for the Ottoman Empire.
I replied with a remark to the effect that in some part he was reacting
to the elitism he perceived in the Muslims, ie how anything that
Christians come into contact with is defiled.  

I wanted to research this a bit further and found a paper presented by
one Ben Rejeb, Lotfi, "Mark Twain, the Ottoman Empire and Palestine".
The paper is not available but the abstract describes it:  "... This
paper will explore the sources of that vision, Twains orientalism and
his modes of expression, as well as the interplay of fancy and reality,
of humor and seriousness, of childrens fantasies and historico-political
designs."

The paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Studies
Association.  My print out of the abstract does not contain the date of
the meeting.

Would anyone care to comment about this?