As someone who has visited over forty-five countries, I sometimes feel presumptuous; yet every travel enthusiast has a "master," and mine is Evliya Çelebi. Observing a man who, without airplane tickets, wandered three continents on foot for forty years in the 17th century, meticulously documenting everywhere he went, I recognize anew how young a tradition modern travel writing truly is. In my hand, I possess a phone; in my pocket, a mapping application; yet I sometimes struggle to truly understand a single city. He, on horseback, by caravan, sometimes on foot, recorded everything he witnessed.
From an Istanbul Youth to an Legendary Traveler
Evliya Çelebi was born March 25, 1611, in Istanbul, son of a family with palace connections and comfortable means. His given name was Derviş Mehmed Zıllî; he received excellent education, became a Quran reciter, studied calligraphy and music, and grew up in court circles. Yet his true passion was travel. According to his own account, in a dream he saw Prophet Muhammad and, mishearing (or perhaps mishearing deliberately), asked for "travel" instead of "intercession"—a whimsical beginning that encapsulates the characteristic blend of fact and legend throughout his entire work.
His journeys, beginning around 1640 and lasting roughly forty years until the 1670s, were extensive. Curiously, the end of this prolific figure remains unclear. Sources place his death somewhere between 1682 and 1684, likely in Cairo, though no confirmed grave record exists. That a man who traced everyone's and everywhere's footprints should himself leave such unclear traces has always struck me as darkly ironic.
Hundreds of Cities in Forty Years: The Monumental Scope of the Book of Travels
Evliya Çelebi's legacy to us is his ten-volume Book of Travels. Across these volumes, he journeyed through Anatolia, the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and Egypt comprehensively; he also recounted an Ottoman embassy mission to Vienna. Throughout these forty-year wanderings, he passed through hundreds of cities and towns, meticulously recording fortifications, mosques, bazaars, documenting populations, craftspeople, local cuisines, distinctive expressions, even a city's water's taste. The "local experience" modern travel writers carefully pursue, he deployed across three continents alone, with single pen. When entering a city, he noted its population, its artisans, its foods, the phrases people spoke, even the flavor of its water. Today, historians still consult this text for 17th century Ottoman city populations—from administrative structures to craftspeople's guilds.
This scale transforms the Book of Travels from a simple travel diary into a massive inventory of Ottoman geography, administration, urban institutions, and society. The first volume focuses almost entirely on Istanbul; describing his birthplace street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, he simultaneously weaves in his childhood and palace years. Subsequent volumes encompass an ever-widening geography—from frontier fortifications to Caucasian villages, from Cairo's crowded bazaars to Balkan market days—recording at each stop who governed, which spiritual orders were active, which crafts dominated. What particularly strikes me is how he traversed such vast territory alone, often following official duties—embassy missions, troop movements, tax collection assignments—yet harnessed each journey for a second purpose: observation and documentation.
Fact or Legend? The Dual Character of His Narrative
Here the complexity deepens. Evliya Çelebi did not write in uniform voice; he interwove concrete observations he witnessed with legends he heard, folk etymologies, and occasionally exaggerations defying measure. While meticulously counting a city's mosques and bathhouses, paragraphs later he might attach a city's name to a completely invented etymology or multiply battle casualty figures beyond recognition.
Historians grasp the text with both hands: on one side, an invaluable primary source; on the other, a text requiring careful filtering, one where literary imagination sometimes intervened. Modern scholarship cross-references Evliya's information as far as possible with archival records, endowment registers, and other travelers' accounts. Reading Evliya Çelebi teaches simultaneous wonder and healthy skepticism—which, I believe, makes him a far more engaging travel companion than a merely factual chronicle.
UNESCO's Seal: A Masterpiece in World Memory
This work's value extends beyond Turkey. Turkey's UNESCO application, submitted in 2012, saw the Book of Travels inscribed in 2013 on UNESCO's Memory of the World International Register. The manuscripts today are preserved in the Topkapi Palace Museum Library and the Süleymaniye Manuscript Library. UNESCO itself characterizes the Book of Travels as among Islamic literature's—perhaps world literature's—longest and most comprehensive travel narratives.
For me, this inscription is no mere symbolic decoration; it represents concrete evidence that a travel text, centuries later, remains consulted for understanding how a society saw itself and described its geography. The Memory of the World list precisely serves such function: documenting a text not merely as one nation's property but as shared cultural heritage of all humanity. The Book of Travels' inclusion situates it squarely within international cultural heritage discourse, extracting it from the narrow academic circles concerned with Ottoman history.
Traces Remaining Today
Evliya Çelebi's 400th birthday in 2011 was commemorated on UNESCO's commemoration calendar, celebrated internationally. Today his name adorns streets, cultural centers, and awards throughout Turkey; even in cities like Skopje, which he once visited and described, streets bear his name. Through documentaries, novels, television series, and academic works, his name continually resurfaces as founding reference point for Turkish travel literature.
In numerous Turkish cities I have visited, I've repeatedly heard local guides or museum officials explain a building's history by saying "Evliya Çelebi also visited here and wrote thus-and-so." This—a text written four centuries ago maintaining such organic integration within daily tourism discourse—represents perhaps the clearest evidence of its cultural impact. Academic circles show no difference; much scholarship on Ottoman urban history, folklore, linguistics, and historical geography still references or compares data from the Book of Travels.
When traveling and writing about a place, I sometimes feel like his exceedingly distant, modest descendant. The difference between us is GPS, airplanes, and internet; yet the impulse to stay curious and document observation remains the same. The reason Evliya Çelebi merits reading today is precisely this: a human being's effort to understand the world four centuries ago still teaches us something.