Tag: Evliya Celebi

Exploring Turkey by horse, train, cycle and sail boat
From a riding trek along the Evliya Çelebi Way, to boarding the Dogu Express, to sailing the Ceramic Gulf, or cycling in Cappadocia, there is more than one way to explore Turkey
- Harriet O’Brien
- The Guardian
Mountain bikers in the Love Valley, Cappadocia, Turkey. Photograph: N Eisele-Hein/Getty Images/LOOK

Cycle in Cappadocia

With its golden landscape of great rock cones and spires known as “fairy chimneys”, the central mountainous region of Cappadocia looks like the stuff of fantasy. This other-wordly area is exhilarating cycling terrain, with quiet tracks and dirt roads winding through weird and wonderful volcanic scenery. EcoTurkey has several eight-night cycling trips here, stopping at rock-cut churches and remote villages, and staying in small hotels and cave rooms. The Cappadocia Adventure Biking Tour is graded “moderate” and would suit those with a reasonable level of fitness. It is a circular trip from Kayseri, taking in Soganlı valley, Nar lake and the incredible monastery and churches at Selime.

• The next trip with EcoTurkey (020-3119 0004, ecoturkey.com) is from 11-18 May and costs from £650pp, including accommodation, meals, guide, and support vehicle, but not flights. Fly to Istanbul, then take aTurkish Airlines) flight to Kayseri. Mountain bikes can be hired from Kayseri for about £110 a week. Or local company Argeus Tourism and Travel can tailor-make individual trips

Drive the Aegean Coast

A leisurely independent road trip from Istanbul to Bodrum will take you to some of Turkey’s most poignant and impressive sites. Among the most notable are Troy; the cemeteries of Gallipoli; Assos, with the remains of the Doric temple of Athena; the ancient Greek city of Pergamon; Ephesus, whose Temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and the remains of Priene, with the striking backdrop of Mount Mykale – but there is plenty more along the way. Overnight stops could include Cunda island, also known as Ali Bey Adasi, near Troy, where the seven-room Otel Sobe hotel is a delight, and the pretty Ottoman village of Sirince, where Nisanyan House hotel has been developed from an atmospheric old inn. The latter is close to Ephesus, so convenient for getting to this much-visited monument early, and avoiding the worst of the crowds.
• Car hire from Istanbul’s Atatürk airport and also downtown Sultanahmet is available through a number of agencies including Hertz and Europcar

Ride the Evliya Çelebi Way

Riding the Evliya Celebi route in Turkey.Remote areas of Turkey’s north-west became accessible when a newhorse riding and hiking trail opened in 2011. It follows part of the pilgrimage route of the celebrated 17th-century traveller and adventurer Evliya Çelebi – who was also a talented dervish, musician and writer. Developed from goat tracks, forestry paths and Roman and Ottoman roads, the trail passes some of the country’s most spectacular landscape, taking in ancient hill forts and villages that are well off the beaten track, as well as beautiful stretches of Lake Iznik. The full route is roughly 650km and takes about 25 days to complete on horseback, but it’s possible to do shorter sections. In October, In the Saddle has a 14-night riding trip starting at the village of Hersek, near Istanbul, and finishing at Kütahya, the ancestral home of Evliya.
• From £2,349pp, including accommodation, guide, riding, and most meals, but not flights to Istanbul. The trip runs from 5-19 October, with the possibility of shortening the ride and returning on 12 October. 01299 272997, inthesaddle.com

Cruise the Ceramic gulf

A cruise on a traditional gulet sailing boat is one of the most captivating ways of exploring Turkey’s southern coast, sailing around long mountain-backed peninsulas and stopping at sites largely inaccessible by road.Peter Sommer Travels offers a particularly appealing and remote trip around the Ceramic gulf, off Bodrum. This is one of the most unspoilt parts of the south-west region, with seascapes of quiet coves and deep inlets, and a landscape dotted with sites of immense historical interest. There is plenty of opportunity to swim, kayak and snorkel along the way. Highlights include the wonderfully preserved remains of the marble city of Knidos, and the castle of St Peter in Bodrum, built by the Knights of Rhodes and now one of the world’s most renowned museums of underwater archaeology.
• From £2,065pp (based on two sharing) including transfers to and from the boat, all meals on board, entrance fees, excursions from the gulet and guiding, but not flights. The next trip runs from 8-15 June. 01600 888220, petersommer.com

Take the train to Kars

Remains of Great Cathedral at Ani, ruined capital of the Armenian Kingdom, near Kars. Photograph: AlamyThe Dogu Express runs across Turkey from the capital, Ankara, to the city of Kars on the Armenian border, passing through magnificent rugged scenery, most notably along the Euphrates river. It makes a relaxing yet thrilling trip and, complete with couchettes and restaurant car, is a comfortable way to venture to the wild east of the country. One of the highest cities in Turkey, Kars is home to the dramatic remains of a 12th-century castle, and is a convenient gateway for a visit to the striking ruins of Ani, an Armenian medieval city that is now on the Turkish side of the border. Trains leave from Ankara every day at 6pm and arrive at Kars the following day at 6.29pm. Note that for this year and next, Istanbul’s Haydarpasa railway station is closed for engineering works. To reach Ankara from Istanbul, you will instead need to take a bus to Eskisehir, from where a high-speed train connects to the capital.
• Tickets from Ankara to Kars cost about £20pp one-way in a four-berth couchette (two-berth options are also available) and can be bought through tcdd.gov.tr or at Turkish railway stations

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/mar/22/turkey-holidays-horse-riding-train-cycle-sailing
March 24, 2013
Doing It the Evliya Celebi Way

Doing It the Evliya Celebi Way

By ANDREW FINKEL

ISTANBUL — Whenever I set out to tour Turkey with my wife, I understand exactly what Diana, Princess of Wales, meant when she complained about there being “three of us” in her marriage. My rival’s name is Evliya Celebi, and he spent much of his life on a horse. He was born 400 years ago and Unesco decided to celebrate his birth this year. I can’t compete.

For a start, he was more productive than I, or indeed most people, could hope to be. Once Evliya hit the road in 1640, he never stopped traveling. (“Celebi” means “esquire.”) The accounts of his journeys run to 2,400 folios, or ten volumes in the recently completed Turkish edition. He is Marco Polo and Samuel Pepys rolled into one; a Muslim Michel de Montaigne, an Ottoman Herodotus.

Through his eyes we witness a dental operation at the Hapsburg court; the risqué shenanigans in a bathhouse in Bursa, Turkey; torture in Safavid, Iran; and the Parthenon in all its 1668 glory — 20 years before a cannonball hit an ammunition dump inside the temple and blew it to smithereens. He fends off brigands in the forests of deepest Anatolia and leads the call to prayer after the Ottoman conquest of Crete. Above all, he is the historian of the common people and offers a unique first-hand account of everyday life at the peak of the Ottoman Empire.

So while my wife Caroline, a historian of the period, is happy to leave home without me, she’ll never leave without Evliya. Only the other day she set out to recreate the first stages of his 1671 pilgrimage to Mecca. Caroline and a group of like-minded enthusiasts, including botanists and cultural historians, rode in his hoof-prints for 40 days. They wound their way from a spot across the Gulf of Izmit near Istanbul, inland down the west of Turkey toward Kutahya, Evliya’s ancestral home. In so doing, they carved out what has now been dubbed the Evliya Celebi Way, Turkey’s 13th official cultural route and the only such trek documented for both riders and hikers, with G.P.S. coordinates and detailed descriptions.

The route winds through settlements and along paths that have been largely unchanged since antiquity. Exploring this landscape through Evliya’s eyes is not just a game of historical make-believe but a way of preserving it for the future. Developing long-distance treks in Turkey as a way of saving the environment was the brainchild of Kate Clow, an IT specialist turned eco-warrior. Her mission has been to prevent Turkey’s booming tourism industry from churning up everything in its path.

For years Turkey vowed not to replicate the Costa del Chaos of Spanish-style budget resorts, and for years developers built one bed-factory after another. Some 30 million tourists visit Turkey every year; the industry is worth $20 billion. Yet no one has calculated the environmental cost of establishing golf courses along the arid Mediterranean coast or bulldozing great swathes of it. Meanwhile, the profits might soon hit a cap. Those hoping to get rich quick off the sun-broiled backs of Northern Europeans should consider this paradox: the more visitors come, the less they spend. Expenditure per tourist in Turkey is going down.

Clow set out to generate more sustainable tourism by appealing to people’s appetite for traveling in time. Visitors who come to Turkey to take in its natural and historical wonders contribute more to the economy than those whose purview is limited to bars and beaches. Clow’s first long-distance trekking route, the 500-kilometer Lycian Way, which opened in 1999, now attracts some 15,000 visitors every year (most don’t walk the entire stretch, however). Hikers stay in tents or rural homestays, not concrete towers. And they provide an income for the villages through which they pass, encouraging the natural custodians of the countryside to stay on the land.

Backpacking or riding horses through river beds isn’t everyone’s idea of a restful two-week holiday. But with Evliya at one’s side it’s easier to remember that the journey is often more interesting than the destination. Even I can get used to the idea of that ménage à trois.

Andrew Finkel has been a foreign correspondent in Istanbul for over 20 years, as well as a columnist for Turkish-language newspapers. His latest book, “Turkey: What Everyone Needs to Know,” will be published next year.

via Doing It the Evliya Celebi Way – NYTimes.com.

December 14, 2011
Chronicling the Caliphate

The Ottoman Empire’s greatest travel writer captured a peak moment in Islamic civilization.

(Page 1 of 2)

ottomon-empire-melik-OV12-vl Shane McCauley / Gallery Stock

Shane McCauley / Gallery Stock Evliya Çelebi relates a magical version of the Islamic empire.

Evliya Çelebi relates a magical version of the Islamic empire.

There are important reasons why we should all learn more about life during the Ottoman Empire. It was the last era in which a sultan-caliph, a sort of Islamic emperor-pope, held sway over virtually the entire Muslim geosphere. Many Islamists today explicitly yearn for the return of such a unified Muslim super-state. At the Ottoman Empire’s zenith, roughly between 1600 and 1700, Sharia dominated human affairs from India to Morocco and deep into Europe, stopping just short of Vienna. That era could furnish clues to what it might be like again if the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk gain widespread momentum. Furthermore, with Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan banging on about his party’s “neo-Ottoman” approach to foreign policy, it behooves us to know what coherent world view, if any, he and other nostalgists are drawing on for their grand designs.

The most exhaustive chronicle of the Ottoman world and environs was recorded by Evliya Çelebi (b. 1611), a figure celebrated in the Muslim world as one of history’s greatest travel writers, on par with Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo. A Turk born in Istanbul to a privileged court family, Çelebi traveled for about 45 years, from 1640 up to the year he died in Cairo. He spent those decades crisscrossing the sultan’s dominions, completing pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem and even entering “infidel” Vienna as an ambassador. A native Istanbullu, his intricate portrait of the costumes and conventions of his hometown remains the richest source text for historians. He wrote 10 long volumes of his Seyahatname, or travelogue, in the ornately archaic Arabic-scripted Ottoman language of his day, a language as remote to modern Turks as Latin to Italians. Turks know all about him, name parks after him, but very few read him at any length.

A volume of outtakes from his work, titled An Ottoman Traveller: Selections From the Book of Travels of Evliya Çelebi, was recently published to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Çelebi’s birth. Selected and translated by Ottoman experts Robert Dankoff and Sooyong Kim, it gives us the most accessible glimpse to date into Çelebi’s text, itself a window onto a highly cultivated sensibility living at a peak moment in Islamic civilization. Çelebi embarked on his travels two years after the brutally efficient Sultan Murat IV reconquered Baghdad from the Persians in 1638. (The honorific title of Çelebi denoted a gentleman or esquire of Sultan Murat’s era, and indeed the ancestors of Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi originally came from Turkey with the sultan’s invasion forces.) In various campaigns Murat had stamped out revolts in Anatolia and stabilized the empire’s borders. The ensuing order made the Seyahatname possible, though Murat died the same year that Çelebi set out.

The book can be enjoyed on many levels—for its descriptions of towns, natural wonders, and ancient monuments such as the Parthenon and the Kaaba; for its Sufi-dervish notions of “mystical” love; for its nutty take on history, such as the bios of Jesus and Plato; and for the pleasant company of its unreliable narrator. But one’s first reaction is to marvel at the utter strangeness of the world on view. From Istanbul’s guilds of lion tamers and snow procurers to sorcerers and torturers in far-flung provinces, the unfolding panorama teeming with marvels and superstitions seems closer to the world of antiquity than to our own day.

via The Arab World’s Greatest Travel Writer – Newsweek.

June 15, 2011
Google Makes Special Logo To Celebrate 400th Birthday Of Turkish Traveler Evliya Celebi

ISTANBUL, March 26 (Bernama) — Internet search engine Google has shown a special logo on its homepage to celebrate the 400th birthday of 17th century Turkish traveler and writer Evliya Celebi, reported Turkey’s Anadolu News Agency.

The logo on google.com.tr depicts Evliya Celebi riding a horse. Internet users are able to get special search results about Evliya Celebi by clicking on the icon.

Last year, UNESCO included the 400th anniversary of Ottoman traveler’s birth to its timetable for celebration of anniversaries. Commemoration events for Evliya Celebi (1611-1682) will take place throughout the year in 2011.

Evliya Celebi was born in Istanbul. He began his travels in Istanbul, taking notes on buildings, markets, customs and culture; in 1640, he started his first journey outside the city. His collection of notes from all of his travels formed a ten-volume work called the Seyahatname (Book of Travels).

Although many of the descriptions in this book were written in an exaggerated manner or were plainly inventive fiction or 3rd-source misinterpretation, his notes are widely accepted as a useful guide to the cultural aspects and lifestyle of 17th-century Ottoman Empire.

The first volume deals exclusively with Istanbul, the final volume with Egypt. Despite being characterized as unreliable, the work is valued as both a study of Turkish culture and the lands he reports on.

Currently, there is no English translation of the entire work. There are translations of various parts of the Seyahatname, but not the whole. The longest single English translation was published in 1834 by Ritter Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, an Austrian Orientalist; it may be found under the name “Evliya Efendi.” Von Hammer’s work covers the first two volumes: Istanbul and Anatolia.

The translation is by now quite antiquated, but other sections have been translated, such as Erich Prokosch’s nearly complete German translations of the tenth volume.

An introduction to the work entitled The World of Evliya Celebi: An Ottoman Mentality was published in 2004 written by University of Chicago professor Robert Dankoff.

— BERNAMA

via BERNAMA – Google Makes Special Logo To Celebrate 400th Birthday Of Turkish Traveler Evliya Celebi.

March 27, 2011