The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage, an Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliya Gelebi

303 Pages·2004·14.09 MB·English

by  Robert Dankoff

AN OTTOMAN MENTALITY
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
AND ITS HERITAGE
Politics, Society and Economy
edited by
SuraiyaFaroqhiandHalil Inalcik
Advisory Board
Fikret Adanir•Idris Bostan •Amnon Cohen •Cornell Fleischer
Barbara Flemming •Alexander de Groot •Klaus Kreiser
Hans Georg Majer •Irène Mélikoff •Ahmet Ya¸sar Ocak
Abdeljelil Temimi •Gilles Veinstein •Elizabeth Zachariadou
VOLUME31
AN OTTOMAN MENTALITY
The World of Evliya Çelebi
BY
ROBERT DANKOFF
WITH AN AFTERWORD BY
GOTTFRIED HAGEN
BRILL
LEIDEN•BOSTON
2004
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dankoff, Robert
An Ottoman mentality : the world of Evliya Çelebi / by Robert Dankoff.
p. cm. — (Ottoman Empire and its heritage, ISSN 1380-6076 ; v. 31)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 90-04-13715-7
1. Evliya Çelebi, 1611?-1682? 2. Turkey—History—Ottoman Empire, 1288-1918—I.
Title II. Series.
DR486.E95D36 2004
9104’1’09032—dc22
2004043507
ISSN 1380-6076
ISBN 90 04 13715 7
© Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
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printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS
Foreword .................................................................................... vii
Suraiya Faroqhi
Acknowledgment ........................................................................ xix
Abbreviations .............................................................................. xx
Introduction ................................................................................ 1
Chapter One Man of Istanbul ................................................ 9
Chapter Two Man of the World .......................................... 48
Chapter Three Servitor of the Sultan .................................... 83
Chapter Four Gentleman and Dervish .................................. 115
Chapter Five Raconteur .......................................................... 153
Chapter Six Reporter and Entertainer .................................. 185
Afterword Ottoman Understandings of the World in
the Seventeenth Century ........................................................ 215
Gottfried Hagen
Glossary ...................................................................................... 257
Bibliography ................................................................................ 261
Index ............................................................................................ 267
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FOREWORD
This is the first book-length biography of Evliya Çelebi, who has
some claim to be the Ottoman author most cited by present-day his-
torians. There have been numerous translations and commented edi-
tions of longer or shorter sections of his work, and the entire Seyahatname
(‘Book of travels’) in Latin characters is currently being published in
Istanbul, with volume 8 to appear in short order.1 Yet while the
details of his biography have long since been established, there has
been little attempt to link Evliya’s multifarious activities in Istanbul,
Cairo, the Ottoman provinces and even Vienna with what is now
known of him as an author. That he was a personage of many
different facets, and above all a creative writer, by now is well known
to specialists but has been rarely studied in extenso, the one major
exception being the thorough discussion of Evliya’s visit to Diyarbakır
as undertaken by Martin van Bruinessen, Hendrik Boeschoten and
their team of Dutch fellow scholars.2 A broadly-based overall dis-
cussion of Evliya’s education, accomplishments, world view and also
limitations has therefore been long overdue, and this is what Robert
Dankoff has set out to provide. His previous publications uniquely
qualify him for this task.
Making Evliya accessible
A critical edition of Evliya Çelebi’s work does not as yet exist. But
we do possess manuscripts that encompass the major part of this
gigantic ten-volume travelogue and that have a reasonable claimtobe
regarded as the autograph. However even these manuscripts probably
1 Evliya Çelebi b Dervi{Mehemmed Zilli, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, Topkapı Sarayı
Revan 1457 Numaralı Yazmasının Transkripsyonu—Dizini, vol. 6, ed. by Yücel Da<lı and
Seyit Ali Kahraman and Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, Topkapı Sarayı Ba<dat 308 Numaralı
Yazmasının Transkripsyonu—Dizini, vol. 7 ed. by Yücel Da<lı, Seyit Ali Kahraman and
Robert Dankoff (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2002 and 2003). Robert Dankoff
has in fact been involved in the preparation of both these volumes.
2 Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi in Diyarbekir, ed. and tr. by Martin M. van Bruinessen
et alii (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988).
viii foreword
do not represent the final form that Evliya intended to give to his
work. Thus the editors of the Albanian, Kosovo, Montenegrin and
Ohrid sections of the ‘Book of travels’ have concluded that what
survives of volume 6 is “(per hypothesis) the earliest stage of Evliya’s
draft of a fair copy of his work”.3 As a result, there is room for tex-
tual conjecture, although the editors who have made available numer-
ous selections from Evliya’s work have normally confined themselves
to the correction of obvious errors, especially in the sample texts and
word lists collected by the traveller and pertaining to languages with
an established literary tradition. But more importantly, the reader
often will feel the need for explanatory notes. After all the dissolu-
tion of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of numerous
national states on its former territories have resulted in many towns
and villages having two and even more variant names, and those
used by Evliya will often bear no resemblance to those found in
modern atlases. In the context of a major research project that has
produced a series of maps and studies on the history of the Middle
East, a special map cum explanatory volume has therefore been ded-
icated to the travels of Evliya Çelebi.4
Moreover when dealing with any region visited by this Ottoman
traveller, it may be of advantage to plot his itineraries on a map.
For as suggested many years ago by Pierre Mackay, Evliya’s ‘invented
travels’ can be weeded out quite effectively by means of mapping:
in regions that he did not visit in person, Evliya often provided defec-
tive itineraries, an error that he did not commit in those places
where he evidently had spent time.5 Some of this supplementary
information will be implicit in the translations that so often accom-
pany recent editions of certain sections of Evliya’s travelogue; other
material will find its place in the notes. In his commented edition
of Evliya Çelebi’s adventures in Bitlis, Robert Dankoff for example
has produced a very fine specimen of this genre.6
3 Robert Dankoff and Robert Elsie, Evliya Çelebi in Albania and Adjacent Regions
(Kosovo, Montenegro, Ohrid), The Relevant Sections of the Seyahatname Edited with Translation,
Commentary and Introduction (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000), p. 7.
4 Jens Peter Laut, Materialien zu Evliya Çelebi I. Erläuterungen und Indices zur Karte B
IX 6 “Kleinasien im 17. Jahrhundert nach Evliya Çelebi”(Wiesbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert,
1989).
5 Conference paper by Pierre Mackay given orally.
6 Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi in Bitlis, the Relevant Sections of the Seyahatname, edited
with translation, commentary and introduction by Robert Dankoff (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1990).
foreword ix
But we also possess a good deal of background information that
is best presented in a separate volume. Inevitably Evliya visited certain
regions more than once, and while he did sometimes attempt ele-
mentary cross-referencing, it also happened that the same place was
described, with greater or lesser thoroughness, twice or even three
times. Moreover Evliya’s routes often were determined by his need
to ferret out the necessary financing, in other words an elite patron
who could use him as a secretary, messenger or travel companion.
Thus the Ottoman writer might be obliged to move from one end
of the empire to another within a fairly short space of time. This
situation accounts for part of the overlap between journeys; it also
explains why in books 2–9 the geographical areas covered in any
single volume are often extensive. A summary that recounts Evliya’s
moves and stories chapter by chapter—and both journeys and anec-
dotes are certainly very numerous—is thus a significant aid in finding
the localities needed for a given research project. Robert Dankoff
and Klaus Kreiser have provided us with such a resource, with a
trilingual title as a homage to European integration, supplementing
it with a commented bibliography.7
Exploring human lives
Early attention has focused on Evliya Çelebi as a travel writer, and
his nonchalant use of the sources on which he built his account has
intrigued and sometimes repelled many scholars.8 This study of Evliya’s
sources is by no means completed, and Robert Dankoff has contributed
an investigation of the use that Evliya supposedly made of a writer
that he calls ‘Mı<disi’. This Armenian historian is not documented
7 Robert Dankoff and Klaus Kreiser, Materialien zu Evliya Çelebi II. A Guide to the
Seyâhat-nâme of Evliya Çelebi, Bibliographie raisonnée (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992). Given
the numerous titles on Evliya appearing every year, the bibliography by now needs
to be updated.
8 The pioneering works in this field are Richard Kreutel, Im Reiche des Goldenen
Apfels, Des türkischen Weltenbummlers Evliya Çelebi denkwürdige Reise in das Giaurenland und
in die Stadt und Festung Wien anno 1665, tr. and commented by Richard Kreutel (Graz:
Verlag Styria, 1957), which after the commentator’s death appeared in a new edi-
tion augmented by his friends and colleagues: [Evliya Çelebi], Im Reiche des Goldenen
Apfels..., tr. and commented by Richard F. Kreutel, Erich Prokosch and Karl
Teply (Graz, Wien, Köln: Styria, 1987) and Me{kûre Eren, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi
Birinci Cildinin Kaynakları Üzerinde bir Ara{tırma (Istanbul: n.p., 1960).