he testimony of the French diplomat Félix de Beaujour in the late 18th century regarding the Turkish name of the celebrated Incantadas triggered a series of creative interpretations of the phrase sureth maleh. Besides the issue of the meaning of this name, the relation of the city’s Muslim community with the particular antiquities and their stories remains relatively unknown and understudied.

Using as starting point the work of the poet Ahmet Meşhûrî (1783-1857), this study attempts a preliminary reading of 19th century Ottoman literary and historiographical sources about Thessaloniki. It aims to map the broader conceptual framework within which the perception and the way the Muslim community related to remnants of the past and to this particular monument can be placed. This corpus of texts is historically situated at the threshold of Ottoman modernity, which, among other factors, is defined by the construction of a primary archaeological conscience by the Ottoman state, but also of the conceptualization of the city’s heritage. The aim of this critical read- ing is to highlight the contradictions and ambiguities of this process.