We’re all familiar with Homer and Herodotus and their ancient ramblings and since the 1820s Hellenophiles from Byron to the Durrell brothers have waxed lyrical about the landscapes and customs of Greece. But what happened in the intervening centuries?
He admires Athens as a “prosperous city… lofty in construction, mighty in population… full of marvels”, and declares that the Greek language is “like an ocean”.
At last, a glimpse of Greece in this forgotten era has come to us from the unlikeliest of sources: an Ottoman Turk.
An emissary to various 17th-century Turkish notables, Evliya Çelebi travelled relentlessly through the Ottoman realm for almost 40 years, recording all that he saw and producing a seyahatname (travelogue) in 10 hefty volumes.
From Budapest to Baghdad, crossing the Persian borderlands and sailing down the Nile, outwitting brigands in the hills above Manastir, pondering Athens “the city of sages”, Evliya dutifully observed, his gaze receptive to architecture, natural wonders and human activity.
Ottoman scholars Robert Dankoff and Sooyong Kim have now translated and edited the highlights of Evliya’s magnus opus to produce An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliya Çelebi (Eland; $54.95).
To be fair, Greece and the Greeks do not make up a large portion of this book; nonetheless Evliya was so inquisitive and his adventures so incredible that chapters present a wealth of facts, observations and anecdotes for readers of all persuasions.
There are technical descriptions of working gunpowder mills, discussions of varieties of Egyptian rice and tales of Tartar sorcerers freezing rivers so travellers can cross, as well as Greek drinking songs and fishermen’s rhymes.
The fact that Evliya is a Turk may make some Greek readers bristle, and at times he betrays the prejudices of the era – he often disparages “infidels” and dismisses the faith of Dubrovnik’s Catholics as “preposterous” but in his own way he is open-minded, and he can’t hide his reverence for the wonders he encounters.
He admires Athens as a “prosperous city… lofty in construction, mighty in population… full of marvels”, and declares that the Greek language is “like an ocean”.
For some the Ottoman era was a period when the Greek people and their culture were smothered. Evliya’s account, however, shows that the Greeks continued to go about their business with gusto.
He describes, with a hint of pious disapproval, the lively Greek-owned taverns of Istanbul, prudishly claiming that he only drank “sherbet of Athenian honey”, but the reader can’t help feeling that Evliya would’ve loved to have shared a carafe or two with the boisterous Greeks.
Evliya is a varied raconteur, sometimes haughty, sometimes wry, occasionally ribald, and the book is a like a meal of mezedes, offering diverse episodes that the reader can choose from as they please.
Above all, An Ottoman Traveller offers glimpses of a forgotten past, recording for posterity the “ruby-dripping wines” of Galata’s Greek taverns and the Greek youths of Athens in their “magnificent silk waistbands”.