

Çelebi mixes factual accounts of the places he visits with imaginative storytelling that enhanced the reader's sense of excitement in the adventure of travel. Çelebi was endlessly curious about other cultures, as his accounts in The Book of Travels demonstrate. The Book of Travels (English translation 1834) The Seyahatname, or Book of Travels, which encompasses ten volumes, provides accounts of journeys from Çelebi's home in Constantinople to sites as far away as Greece, Syria, Austria, Russia, and Cairo, where he lived for many years. Çelebi received an extensive education, but he was reluctant to settle into any profession that would limit his ability to travel. His father was a jeweler for the Ottoman court, and his mother was connected to the royal family. Çelebi was born in 1611 into a wealthy family in Constantinople. Firstly, he narrated Abkhaz clans in the part that he wrote this travel. In his great, 10-volume Book of Travels, or Seyâhatnâme, Evliya described Gjirokastër as a beautiful open town, spread across eight hills and valleys overlooked by the fortress, a place where.

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His first Caucasus travel headed to Georgia and Megrelistan over Black Sea in 1640. (Book of Travels)1 CAROLINE FINKEL In 2007 the translation into English of the first two books of Evliya elebi's (E) Seyahatnme2 by the celebrated Austrian diplomat and orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall3 was republished in the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) series Classics of Islam.4 Hammer's translation was based on what is now ms. In 2011, the year which would have been his 400th birthday, Evliya is being paid homage as UNESCO’s Man of the Year.\( \newcommand\)Įvliya Çelebi (1611-1682) The Book of Travels Turkish Near East and Asia Mehmed Zilli, known as Evliya Çelebi, was a Muslim explorer who travelled the Ottoman Empire over the course of forty years and wrote about his experiences in the Seyahatname, or Book of Travels. Evliya Celebi recorded detailed information in his Book of Travels about people and geography of places that he visited in Caucasus regions, which starts from eastern shores of Black Sea.

Sometimes these encounters lead to nothing but sometimes they lead to stories which are so deeply felt, and so universally melodic that they leave echoes which can still be heard and felt today. This 17th century Muslim traveller can sometimes seem narrow-minded and yet this same man can stand in St Stephens Cathedral in Vienna and be moved by the music he hears. Through his stories, we are prompted to think more imaginatively about our own travels and journeys to other cities. These are not just factual accounts, Evliya had a great imagination and just as important as his journal entries was the imaginative storytelling that ran alongside, elaborating, exaggerating, and fantasizing. ‘Seyahatname’ – Book of Travels – is a unique and important text, representing one of the few accounts of the 17th century and the Ottoman world from the perspective of a Muslim. Over the course of his travels he wrote ten volumes detailing his adventures. Evliya Celebi was an enlightened man in a variety of ways who believed in equality, freedom of thought and intellectual debate, and found all of these things present in Islamic societies.
