About the Book
Table of Contents:
CONTENTS Introduction Literary allusions Glossary VOLUME 1 Istanbul 1 Introduction: The dream 2 The SuANleymaniye Mosque 3 The antiquity of smoking 4 Galata 5 Kagithane 6 Guilds' parade 7 Lagari Hasan Celebi VOLUME 2 Anatolia and beyond 1 Setting out 2 Hot Springs of Bursa 3 Return to Istanbul 4 Hamsi in Trabzon 5 Black Sea adventure 6 Tabriz 7 Cat-brokers of Ardabil 8 Oil wells of Baku 9 Cathedral of Echmiadzin 10 Ankara VOLUME THREE In the Retinue of Melek Ahmed Pasha 1 Nasreddin Hoca in Aksehir 2 Safed 3 Sheikh Bekkar the Naked on the road outside Damascus 4 The girl who gave birth to an elephant 5 Armenian 6 The cats of Divrigi 7 Witchcraft in a Bulgarian village 8 Sofia VOLUME FOUR Safavid Borderlands 1 Diyarbekir 2 Bitlis 3 The ruined city of Ahlat 4 On 'extinguishing the candle' VOLUME FIVE East Anatolia and the Balkans 1 Highwaymen in the Bolu Pass; return to Van 2 Escape from Bitlis 3 Diplomacy in Split (Spalato) 4 The bandit Yano VOLUME SIX Hungary and the German Campaign 1 An incident on the battlefield 2 ShkodeANr (Scutari) 3 The Samakov iron works 4 An adventure near Komorn; Tatar raid into Western Europe 5 Dubrovnik (Ragusa) 6 The great bridge at Mostar VOLUME SEVEN Habsburg Borderlands, Crimea and beyond 1 Raiding expeditions in 'Germany'; a fabulous tree in Krokondar 2 The battle on the Raab River (Battle of Saint Gotthard, 1664) 3 Comparison of Austrians and Hungarians 4 A pleasure resort near Vienna; the free conduct of women 5 Vienna 6 Crimea 7 A meal of strange honey in Circassia 8 Kalmyks and cannibalism VOLUME EIGHT Greece and the Conquest of Crete 1 Return to Crimea 2 Report to the Sultan in Edirne 3 The Gypsies of GuANmuANlcine (Komotini) 4 Athens 5 Balibadra: A great cypress tree and the five ethnic groups of the Morea 6 Siege of Candia: Ministrations to the wounded and Saint Green-Arm 7 A captive woman in Kolorya 8 Fair at Doyran VOLUME NINE Pilgrimage 1 Setting out on the Hajj 2 Brigands at the Alman Pass; Ephesus 3 Safed and the land of Canaan 4 Jerusalem 5 Sheikh Bekkar the Naked in Damascus 6 The Hajj caravan; Muzayrib, the Hajj bazaar 7 Medina 8 The People of Mecca 9 Uyun al-qasab 10 St Catherine's Monastery on Mt Sinai VOLUME TEN Egypt and Sudan 1 Adam's prayer for Egypt in 'Hebrew' 2 Relation among Nile overflow, plenty and poverty, crowdedness of Cairo, people and donkeys 3 Snake medicine and snake charming 4 Rain, snow and hail in Egypt in 1083 (1672) 5 Crocodiles 6 The Cairo underworld and unusual trades 7 Trades and products lacking in Egypt 8 Chicken incubation; Sabil Allam stones 9 Exploring a pyramid 10 Weddings, circumcision, etc. 11 Mevlud of Seyyid Ahmad al-Badawi in Tanta 12 Mountain of the Birds 13 Map of the Nile 14 Meeting with KoANr Husayn Qan 15 Meeting with Qan Girgis; encounter with two Bektashi dervishes 16 Elephants and monkeys 17 Envoi APPENDIX Outline of Journeys and Events in the Ten Volumes of the Book of Travels Bibliography Acknowledgements Index
About the Author :
Evliya Celebi is variously described as a Turkish Pepys, a Muslim Montaigne or an Ottoman Herodotus. Born in Istanbul in 1611, he started travelling in 1640 and continued for over forty years, stopping eventually in Cairo where he is thought to have died around 1685. Starting with a volume on his native city, he collected his lively and eclectic observations into a ten-volume manuscript the Seyahatname, or Book of Travels. Virtually unknown to western readers, Celebi is celebrated in the Islamic world as one of the great travel writers of the world. He has long been a favoured source on the culture and lifestyle of the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire and historians of this period are indebted to his vivid eyewitness descriptions.
Review :
"Evliya Celebi was the widest-eyed, most intensely curious, inquisitive and prolific travel writer the Ottoman world ever produced. A learned and perceptive gentleman-observer from courtly Istanbul at the height of its power, Evilya's work records and preserves an entire world otherwise lost to history. A proper edition of his massive work has long been overdue, and Robert Dankoff magnificently translates the highlights for us, in a book which is likely to change for ever our perceptions of the Ottoman Empire." William Dalrymple "For far too long, Evliya Celebi (1611-1684) and his Book of Travels have been almost entirely unknown outside Turkey, and little read except by scholars. The publication of this wonderfully rich, lively selection from the ten volumes of Evliya's manuscript, in a clear, vigorous and atmospheric English translation, is sure to bring this monumental work the attention it deserves. Including an informative introduction, a useful guide to literary allusions, a glossary, several maps and a generous selection of full-colour illustrations, this is a beautiful book at a reasonable price that connoisseurs of Turkey will want to read and reread, an which deserves to find its way onto university reading lists - Evliya Celebi is the greatest of Ottoman travel writers, if not one of the greatest travel writers of his own or any other period. This is not only because of the geographical and historical range of his travels, and for the otherwise unavailable yet fascinating details of social life that he records, but also because - as Dankoff and Kim make evident - he wrote with great enthusiasm and vigour and knew how to tell a gripping story." Gerald MacLean,Cornucopia, October 2010 "Ottoman historians have long kept Evliya Celebi to themselves, and now the secret is out. Recounting the miraculous and the mundane, the historical and the geographical, the linguistic and the musical, Evliya Celebi reaches across the centuries to seduce a new readership with this masterly translation." Caroline Finkel "The most extraordinary thing about Evliya Celebi's Book of Travels [An Ottoman Traveller] is that any of us ever managed to live without it. Words can hardly describe the marvels it contains. A treasury of almost everything imaginable known in the 17th century East, it's a resource of boundless charm, and one written with fabulous insight, erudition, and wit. Celebi's eye for detail, his knowledge of the sciences, geography, human nature and religion, make him quite irresistible, as does the astonishing clarity with which he describes everything he encounters. There could be no volume more entertaining to take on a long journey, and no companion more inspiring, or simply so fun to be with, as the inimitable Evliya Celebi." Tahir Shah, Author of The Caliph's House and The Sorcerer's Appentice "This partial translation of the Seyahatname, the great 17th century Turkish travelogue of journeys within the Ottoman Empire and beyond - by Topkapi Palace insider Evliya Celebi does honour to its breadth and depth as a mirror to its most interesting author and the government that he served. His 10-volume encyclopaedic masterpiece of geography, folklore, and personal adventure has long lingered in the penumbra of untranslated non-western travel classics. This detailed account of its own world as well as of the West and westerners shines a bright light on the Ottoman Empire at its apex." Saudi AramcoWorld , Sept/Oct 2010 "If you can imagine a writer who is a combination of Samuel Pepys, Falstaff and the 18th century courtier Prince de Ligne writing in the Islamic world of the Ottoman empire at its height, then you will approach the fascinating talent of Evliya Celebi. He was a contemporary of Pepys and while that irrepressible diarist was caressing his mistresses and compiling the admiralty accounts in Charles II's London, Celebi was travelling and writing on places, ideas, food, religion war and even sexual mores in the greatest empire of the world. His achievement is not just that of a superb stylist and aesthete but also that of scale: he wrote 10 volumes and was both storyteller and obsessive compiler of facts; his work is both entertainment and almanac, certainly the longest book of travel writing in the Islamic world and probably in Christendom too. However Celebi is scarcely known in the west and little published in English - So it is typically brave of Eland, a superb publishing house that specialises in making available lost jewels of travel writing - to bring out this unforgettable, fun yet brilliantly compelling selection. Robert Dankoff, one of the translators, is the world's pre-eminent scholar of Celebi - [Celebi] was outrageously entertaining - he knew everybody in his Ottoman world from the sultan down , and though he could have served the government, he instead joined the entourages of various Ottoman potentates and travelled with them around the empire, recording his own adventures and the facts about each place - Celebi is an immensely sympathetic figure today because though he was an Islamic believer, he disliked Muslim fanaticism and his jokes on Islam, which appear through the book are striking in that no Muslim - or Christian for that matter - would dare make them today - This book is an adventure that brings to life Ottoman court and society and opens up for the modern reader a whole new world." Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Financial Times, 9 October 2010 "The achievement of Ibn Battutah as a travel writer, though not necessarily as a traveler, pales before that of the Ottoman traveler Evliya Celebi (b. 1611), who began traveling in 1640 and did not stop until his death in Cairo in 1685. Having traveled throughout the Ottoman Empire and dipped into adjacent areas like Habsburg Vienna, he recorded everything in a ten-volume manuscript, his Seyahatname, or Book of Travels. For many years this has been known to historians as a rich source of information on the culture and lifestyle of the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire - We now have the first attempt in English to give samples from the text of all ten volumes - Evliya's openness and intellectual generosity make him a great companion - Among the highlights of Evliya's Book of Travels are his pacy and often humorous description of his adventures which compare well with those in the memoirs of the Mughal Emperor Babur - One example of humour at his own expense comes when, after a battle in the Transylvanian campaign, Evliya is literally caught with his trousers down and, relieving himself, he is 'jumped' by a Christian Soldier. Evliya gains the upper hand and cuts off the man's head, but ends up covered with excrement as well as blood. 'My Evliya, you smell strangely of shit', says Ismail Pasha as Evliya brings him the severed head. 'Don't ask, my lord, what calamities have befallen me', he replies. All the officers laugh uproariously. Brought to us by the specialist travel publisher Eland, An Ottoman Traveller should create a large audience for this most engaging man." Francis Robinson, TLS
