An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliya Celebi
An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliya Celebi
Evliya Celebi is the greatest travel writer of the Ottoman Empire, sometimes described as the Ottoman Herodotus. Born in 1611, he started traveling in 1640 (during the reign of Sultan Murad IV) and continued for over 40 years, eventually stopping in Cairo where he died in 1685.
This translation offers selections from Celebi’s 10-volume work for the first time in English and gives a taste of the Celebi’s interests, which range from architecture to natural history, through Sufism, politics, music, science and the supernatural. Celebi is a consummate storyteller and recounts the miraculous to the mundane with an intensely curious eye and inquisitive mind. Delightful.
Contents
Istanbul
Anatolia
Retinue of Malek Ahmed Pasha
Safavid Borderlands
East Anatolia and the Balkans
Hungary and the German Campaign
Habsburg Borderlands, Crimea and Beyond
Greece and the Conquest of Crete
Haj
Egypt and Sudan
Mevlud of Seyyid Ahmad al-Badawi
