Aleksandar Fotić, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade

Receptions of Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname in

Serbian Historiography and Challenges
of the Original Manuscript

Serbian and ex-Yugoslav historiography and Oriental studies became familiar with
Evliya’s work at the very beginning of the 20th century and the data contained in his
travel account has ever since been an unavoidable source. New examinations of the
autograph have shown that Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname is for the most part a reliable
and trustworthy source, revealing, on the other hand, major shortcomings resulting
from the use of its 19th-century uncritical and faulty edition. The new Turkish edi-
tion brings very important, even quite surprising additions, but they have not yet
been made available to the Serbian-speaking public. This paper points to the types of
mistakes and oversights in the old edition and in Hazim Šabanović’s Serbo-Croatian
translation as well as to the possible amount of omitted text relating to the areas of
interest to Serbian history, urging for a new, critical edition furnished with commen-
taries, facsimiles and accompanying studies.

Even though it is exactly two hundred years since the renowned orientalist and
historian Joseph von Hammer pointed to the importance of Evliya Çelebi (1611–
1685?) and his Book of Travels (Seyahatname),1 Evliya’s monumental work has not
yet been fully explored or explained.2 Serbian historiography, the historiographies of
the former Yugoslav lands as well as Oriental studies started to be acquainted with
his Book of Travels gradually, fragment by fragment, as early as the beginning of the
twentieth century, and it has ever since been an unavoidable source for the history of
the seventeenth-century Balkans.3 It should be noted that Evliya Çelebi toured the
European possessions of the Ottoman Empire from 1660 to 1670.

1 This paper is based on my communication presented at the international workshop The Latest
Edition of Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname: The Account of New Insights held at the Faculty of
Philosophy in Zagreb 23–24 June 2016. The workshop has had a formative influence on my views
put forward in this paper. Arguments for most of these views have been expounded in Serbian in:
Aleksandar Fotić, „Stari izvor, nova saznanja: izazovi autografa Putopisa Evlije-čelebije“, Književna
istorija LI, 167 (2019): 243-257.
2 Robert Dankoff and Semih Tezcan, “An Evliya Çelebi Bibliography”, 4th ed. 2015, 39, https://
lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/ottomanturkish/files/2015/09/Evliya-Celebi-Bibliography.
September-2015.pdf (accessed June 2, 2018).
3 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis. Odlomci o jugoslovenskim zemljama, prevod, uvod i komentar Hazim
Šabanović (Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 19794); Nenad Moačanin and Kornelija Jurin-Starčević,
“‘Novi’ Evlija Čelebi: autograf ‘Putopisa’”, Književna smotra 173, no. 3 (2014): 77-90.

149
150 Receptions of Evlİya Çelebİ’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography

Evliya Çelebi’s in every respect unique work had to come a long way before it was
given its due place in world and Serbian historiographies. The issue of the credibility
of Evliya’s account has from the very beginning polarised the world’s academic com-
munity into those who have believed nothing he said, classifying his Book of Travels as
“belles-lettres”, and a group that has included both a few sceptics willing to accept only
an occasional piece of information and those who have uncritically taken the truth
of his account for granted, especially the data they could use to support their pre-
conceived views. As noted by Marta Andrić, prejudice towards Evliya Çelebi was so
strong that the editors of a politically high-profile project, The History of the Peoples of
Yugoslavia, initiated in the late 1950s, decided against the use of his Book of Travels as
a source.4 This was not an arbitrary decision. On the contrary, it was very much in line
with the mode of academic thought prevailing worldwide at the time. The authors of
the entry on Evlyia Çelebi in the analytical Encyclopaedia of Islam (Second Edition),
first published in 1958, and then republished until 1991 (and later as CD editions), J.
H. Mortdmann and H. V. Dudda, emphasised that Evliya’s account cannot be always
believed and that he lacked an interest in historical truth. In their view, his Book of
Travels is “easy literature” whose purpose was to offer Ottoman seventeenth-century
intellectuals an entertaining read in colloquial Ottoman Turkish. This encyclopaedic
entry was not replaced with a new one until 2016.5
Much has changed since the late 1950s, however, and although the key encylo-
paedic entry remained unreplaced until recently, both our knowledge about Evliya
Çelebi and our understanding of the importance of his Seyahatname have grown
and deepened. And so much so that, by 2008, a renowned scholar of his work, G.
Hagen, could safely remark that “his 10-volume travelogue is the most important
single text of Ottoman literature” and, moreover, “the largest work of its kind in
Islamic literature, and perhaps in world literature, a literary source of unique rich-
ness”.6 The research on Evliya Çelebi and his Book of Travels done to date has been
crowned with an outstanding study by Robert Dankoff, who has devoted much of
his career to this monumental work.7

4 Moačanin and Jurin-Starčević, “‘Novi’ Evlija Čelebi”, 79; Branislav Đurđev, Bogo Grafenauer
et al., ed., Historija naroda Jugoslavije, Vol. 2 (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1959); Bogo Grafenauer,
Branislav Đurđev et al., ed., Istorija naroda Jugoslavije, Vol. 2, Od početka XVI do kraja XVIII veka
(Beograd: Prosveta, 1960).
5 J. H. Mordtmann – [H. W. Duda], “Ewliyā Čelebi”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, CD-ROM Edition
v. 1.0. (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 1999); Robert Dankoff, “Evliya Çelebi”, in Encyclopaedia of
Islam, Three, ed. Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, et al., first published online: 2016, http://dx.doi.
org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_26262 (accessed June 2, 2018).
6 Gottfried Hagen, “Evliya Çelebi”, in Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Gábor Ágoston and
Bruce Masters (New York: Facts on File, 2009), 209-210.
7 Robert Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality. The World of Evliya Çelebi (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 20062).
First edition 2004.
 Receptions of Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography 151

The fact that Evliya wished, among other things, to entertain his readers should
not be the reason to doubt the quality of his sources and information. That he
had a clear wish to write down accurate information has been shown countless
times. It is evidenced by his method of gathering information. He did not always
trust even eyewitnesses. He warned against lying and frequently expressed doubts,
in different ways, about the trustworthiness of the information or stories he had
been presented with. He took the trouble of personally checking many pieces of
information: for example, he measured the length of several fortification walls, in-
cluding the city wall of Vienna, by pacing them out, and even defined the unit
of measurement as a step of an adult well-built man, not of an “opium addict”. If
unable to check a piece of information, as with the story about the grassy islets
being moved around Lake Scutari by stormy winds, he remarked that he did not
see it with his own eyes but that he was told by elder citizens of Scutari about such
an occurrence of a few decades earlier. Evliya tended to gather official data at the
source: from fort commanders, kadis, local muhtesibs, the sheikhs of some guilds,
and even from village headmen. Whenever he had the time and opportunity, he
transcribed data from the kadi’s sicils. Since the courts were furnished with the
local records, Evliya used to leaf through the copies of imperial survey registers and
the vakıfnames of major vakıfs.8
The reasons for mistrusting Evliya’s writings may be seen as coming from two
main sources. One is a biased reading of his text. Apart from credible data, Evliya
Çelebi recorded local beliefs, legends, dreams and various bizarre stories, some-
times purposely, to communicate a satirical message. Although he keeps emphasis-
ing that he cannot vouch for his sources, that some of the stories are second-hand,
his reservations were either ignored or, more frequently, omitted as unnecessary
from the first Ottoman edition successively published from 1896/7. The other
source of mistrust has to do with the poor transcription of the manuscript used at
the time.9 Ahmed Cevdet’s publication of the first six volumes of the Book of Travels
cannot be taken as a serious editorial effort, even by late nineteenth-century stan-
dards. The original text was frequently shortened, simplified or even complete-
ly rewritten. The editor tended to omit the terms he was unfamiliar with or the
passages he did not understand, especially those in non-Ottoman languages, and
showed the utmost disregard for toponymy, anthroponymy and, especially, nu-
merical data. On the other hand, the omission of some sections of Evliya’s text was
due to severe censorship under Abdülhamid II.10 All these were also the problems
8 Ibid., 186-196.
9 [Evliya Çelebi], Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, hazırlayan Ahmed Cevdet, Vols. 1–6 (İstanbul,
1314–1318 /=1896–1901/).
10 Moačanin and Jurin-Starčević, “‘Novi’ Evlija Čelebi”, 78–81; Dankoff and Tezcan, “An Evliya
Çelebi Bibliography”, 4–5.
152 Receptions of Evlİya Çelebİ’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography

which Hazim Šabanović had to cope with while translating Evliya’s book for the
Yugoslav readership, and he spoke about them in his preface to the first Yugoslav
edition.11
The Serbian public was for the first time presented with a translation of the
parts of Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels relating to the Serbian lands in 1905. The
translation, instigated by the great Serbian scholar and politician Stojan Novaković,
then serving as minister plenipotentiary (kapukethüda) of the Kingdom of Serbia in
Istanbul, was done by Dimitrije Čohadžić, secretary and interpreter of the Serbian
Legation.12 Of course, just like all subsequent more- or less-competent translations
(by S. Kemura, G. Elezović, J. Radonić, M. Delić etc.), his was done from the only
available edition, the old Istanbul one. There is no need here to retrace the chronol-
ogy of studies of Evliya’s book or to discuss the quality of earlier translations, since
both are fully known from the preface to its edition by Hazim Šabanović, an out-
standing connoisseur of Ottoman Turkish and historian. He first published a selec-
tion of excerpts from the Book of Travels in 1954, and his supplemented and revised
editions of 1973 and 1979 remain the most widely used in the area of the former
Yugoslavia.13
All Šabanović’s editions are still in use today, more than twenty years since the mo-
dern Turkish edition of Evliya’s original manuscript, an undertaking of the renowned
Istanbul-based publishing house Yapı Kredi Yayınları. It assembled a team of promi-
nent scholars of Evliya’s work to prepare this new ten-volume edition of the Book of
Travels in Latin transcription (unfortunately, without a facsimile appended). The areas
inhabited by or of some interest to the Serbs are dealt with in volumes 5, 6, 7 and 8.14
It may be said that the Serbian Turkologists and historians concerned with this
historical period have become aware of substantial textual differences shortly after the
appearance of the new Istanbul edition of Evliya’s autograph. In the absence of a new

11 Hazim Šabanović, “Evlijā Čelebī i njegov putopis”, in Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 9–55.
12 Dimitrije S. Čohadžić, “Putopis Evlije Čelebije o srpskim zemljama u XVII veku”, Spomenik XLII,
Drugi razred 37 (1905): 1–34.
13 Šabanović, “Evlijā Čelebī i njegov putopis”, 11–12; Moačanin and Jurin-Starčević, “‘Novi’ Evlija
Čelebi”, 78.
14 Evliyâ Çelebi b. Derviş Mehemmed Zıllî, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi. Topkapı Sarayı
Kütüphanesi Bağdat 307 Numaralı Yazmanın Transkripsiyonu – Dizini, hazırlayanlar Yücel Dağlı,
Seyit Ali Kahraman ve sair, 5. Kitap (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2001); idem, Evliyâ Çelebi
Seyahatnâmesi. Topkapı Sarayı Kütüphanesi Revan 1457 Numaralı Yazmanın Transkripsiyonu –
Dizini, hazırlayanlar Seyit Ali Kahraman ve Yücel Dağlı, 6. Kitap (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları,
2002); idem, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi. Topkapı Sarayı Kütüphanesi Bağdat 308 Numaralı
Yazmanın Transkripsiyonu – Dizini, hazırlayanlar Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Kahraman ve sair, 7.
Kitap (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2003); idem, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi. Topkapı Sarayı
Kütüphanesi Bağdat 308 Numaralı Yazmanın Transkripsiyonu – Dizini, hazırlayanlar Seyit Ali
Kahraman, Yücel Dağlı ve sair, 8. Kitap (İstanbul Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2003).
 Receptions of Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography 153

Serbian translation, however, the new data remain unknown to most scholars in all
other disciplines. If historians and orientalists have not been vocal enough in point-
ing out how essential it is to use the new edition of the Book of Travels, one can hardly
expect that art historians, ethnologists, archaeologists, or other scholars and culture
professionals who make use of this unique source for whatever purpose, will do so.
What Šabanović did all by himself years ago can hardly be done today without
a well-designed teamwork project. Croatian colleagues have been the first to act,
gathering around the project Evliya Chelebi and Croats. New perspectives, carried out
since 2014 at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb under the direction of Professor
Nenad Moačanin.15
The types and nature of errors and shortcomings of the old Istanbul edition and
the significance of the interventions Šabanović made in his translation have been
clearly characterised by Nenad Moačanin and Kornelija Jurin-Starčević in a paper
which offers a detailed explanation of the purpose of the abovementioned project.16
Their conclusions are highly convincing. A potential critical edition could bring
multiple benefits in that it will rectify the old edition’s plentiful oversights, errors
and vague explanations. As far as the area they are dealing with is concerned, which
is mainly present-day Croatia and Bosnia, Evliya’s authograph contains thirty per-
cent more text than Šabanović’s translation. These previously unknown sections are,
in their words, “a rich source for all areas of research, including historical, ethnolog-
ical, cultural-anthropological, sociolinguistic, archaeological, etc.”. A thorough anal-
ysis has led Moačanin and Jurin-Starčević to conclude that “Evliya is a very reliable
and systematic source in many aspects”.17
The fact that the autograph covers the western Balkan area with nearly one-third
more text than the old Istanbul edition is highly indicative when it comes to the Serb-
inhabited areas too. As far as the area of present-day Serbia is concerned, we still lack a
detailed comparative analysis between the autograph and the old Istanbul edition on
which Šabanović based his translation. A cursory analysis of Šabanović’s translation
seems to show that there is no rule as to where and why sections of Evliya’s text were
omitted or as to where more errors were made. I shall try to make a case for a new
critical edition of this precious source by pointing to the types of errors and drastic
differences in comparison to the original text. Clearly, the available space allows me
to offer only a few quite randomly picked examples. I shall pay particular attention to
larger inhabited places, given that the city, as observed by R. Dankoff, “the city is the
central category both for his travels and for his understanding of the world”.18
15 Evliya Chelebi and Croats. New Perspectives, http://www.evliyachelebi.org (accessed June 2,
2018).
16 Moačanin and Jurin-Starčević, “‘Novi’ Evlija Čelebi”.
17 Ibid., 89-90.
18 Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality, 48.
154 Receptions of Evlİya Çelebİ’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography

*
The first set of differences between the texts, an unexpectedly large set indeed, consists of
seemingly minor mistakes in numerical data. They may be the result of typographical,
transcription or translation errors, and they certainly were not intentional. Some of
them have added to the doubts about the trustworthiness of Evliya’s account. Among
the biggest are certainly the data about Zvornik which instead of 80 mahalles in
Šabanović’s translation had only 18, and instead of as many as 2,800 Islamic places of
worship (mihrab) only the plausible 18, the figure of 2,800 referring in fact to the num-
ber of houses.19 Similarly, in Herceg Novi, the old Istanbul edition states 3,080 houses
in five mahalles, whereas the autograph states the reasonable figure of 306 houses.20
It should be noted that Belgrade poses the biggest problem in every respect.
Virtually every sentence in Šabanović’s translation from the old Istanbul edition re-
quires some sort of intervention.
Regardless of the fact that Belgrade’s territory greatly expanded between the end
of the sixteenth century and its first and short-lived occupation by the Austrians
in 1688, the information from the old Istanbul edition that it had a population of
98,000 has been generally seen as exaggerated. The figure of 48,000 people, exclud-
ing the military and the ulema, stated in Evliya’s autograph will never again be called
into doubt. This figure largely tallies with the figures offered by other travellers.
Indeed, it is Evliya Çelebi who should be given more trust since he was the only
among them who had access to official data.21
Given the substantial differences between the texts and what may be called a
true confusion, the reconstruction of the misspelled names of Belgrade’s mahalles,
mosques and mescids, and their respective numbers requires a separate paper and
much more space than available on this occasion.22
Here are a few more examples of errors of this type in the old Istanbul edition.
According to the autograph, there were four, not three, hans in Kruševac.23

19 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 484; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 6. Kitap, 295; Moačanin
and Jurin-Starčević, “‘Novi’ Evlija Čelebi”, 82.
20 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 438; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 6. Kitap, 270; Moačanin
and Jurin-Starčević, “‘Novi’ Evlija Čelebi”, 83.
21 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 84; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 5. Kitap, 195; Aleksandar
Fotić, “Belgrade: A Muslim and Non-Muslim Cultural Centre (16th–17th C.)”, in Provincial Elites
in the Ottoman Empire. Halcyon Days in Crete V. A Symposium Held in Rethymno 10–12 January
2003, ed. Antonis Anastasopoulos (Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2005), 52–53.
22 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 84–87; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 5. Kitap, 195–197. A
paper on the subject is in preparation.
23 Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 5. Kitap, 316; Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 310; Aleksandar
Fotić, “Alaca !i"ār (Kruševac)”, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three, Part 2010-1, ed. Kate Fleet,
Gudrun Krämer, et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2010) 59–60.
 Receptions of Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography 155

In Kuršumlija, Evliya registered one mosque, not three as in Šabanović’s trans-

lation.24
The circumference of the palisade wall (palanka) of Pančevo was 800, not 100
steps. Another error in the section concerning Pančevo was corrected by Šabanović
himself: as in many other places, he rectified the editor’s error by remarking that it is
the Tamiš/Timiş, not the Sava, that flows into the Danube there.25
The kasaba of Čačak does not have 6,000 houses, which is the figure in Šabanović’s
translation, but 600 one- or two-story houses with clay-tiled or thatched roofs.
There are not seven mosques but nine places of worship (mihrab), either.26
There are hundreds of such errors in the old Istanbul edition. The bigger the in-
habited place, the more errors or omissions.
*
The second set of differences consists of vague or even confusing places. A comparison
with the autograph shows clearly how precise Evliya Çelebi was in his explanations.
This quality of his has been pointed to by N. Moačanin, who has relied on the auto-
graph to clarify many doubtful places in Šabanović’s translation of Evliya’s descrip-
tion of Osijek.27
The old Istanbul edition claims, for example, that the kasaba of Prijepolje con-
sists of “two kasabas”. The autograph, however, states that the kasaba of Prijepolje
is composed of two parts (iki böluk kasabadir) separated by a neglected, thousand
steps long piece of land.28
The omitted parts of the description of the area occupied by Belgrade’s vineyards
confuse the readers, making it impossible for them to visualize what in fact is a very
plausible and very clear picture. The translation reads: “They stretch from the south-
east side of the city to the village of Višnjica, and thence to the city’s drinking foun-
tains [sic!], then to the tekke’s vineyard, then to Abaz-(pasha’s) kiosk, then along
the Avala Brook to the fortress of Avala.” It is clear from the autograph that Evliya
delineates the whole area with precision, tracing an arc from the Danube to the Sava:
“They stretch outside the city in the direction of the Kibla to the village of Višnjica,
then to the spring from which the water is distributed to the city’s drinking foun-
tains, then to the tekke’s vineyards, then to Abaza-pasha’s kiosk, then to the brook of
the Avala fortress, then to the village of Topçu (today Topčider), then to the bank of
24 Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 5. Kitap, 316; Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 309.
25 Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 5. Kitap, 201; Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 95.
26 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 380; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 6. Kitap, 240.
27 Nenad Moačanin, “Osmanski Osijek: novi pristup”, Rad Hrvatske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti:
Razred za društvene znanosti 525, 51 (2016): 83–106.
28 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 393; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 6. Kitap, 249; Moačanin
and Jurin-Starčević, “‘Novi’ Evlija Čelebi”, 86.
156 Receptions of Evlİya Çelebİ’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography

the river Sava” (Bu şehrin canib-i kıblesi taşrasında ta karye-i Vişeniçse’ye, andan şehir
çeşmelerine gelen su-başına, andan tekye bağlarına, andan ta Abaza Paşa Köşkü’ne,
andan ta Havale kal‘ası deresine, andan Topçu köyüne, andan ta nehr-i Sava kenarı-
na dek).29 For those who are familiar with the topography of seventeenth-century
Belgrade, the description is so precise that it leaves no room for doubting Evliya’s
information.
*
The third set of differences consists of textual omissions due to censorship,
self-censorship or shortening either at the editor’s will or as a result of using a poor
manuscript copy. Some omissions of smaller or larger text sections are indeed inex-
plicable. These omitted sections, now available in the autograph, largely expand our
knowledge of the space, time, customs and people Evliya encountered.
One of the most striking examples concerns the mentality of the population of
the area bounded by the towns of Rudnik, Požega, Čačak and Užice. A fragment
about jokes and banter between neighbours is missing. “No Disgrace!” Evliya habit-
ually notes before depicting a custom breaching the usual moral norms. And when
he does say it is a shame to use rude words, he justifies himself by saying that it is
important for a traveller to know them because of potential misuse.30 Nor shall we
omit them here.
The local people of Rudnik, Požega and Užice used to say for the locals of Čačak:
“Çaçkalı ve maçkalı ve laşkalı ve pıçkalı.” Here the suffix -li means “from” a place.
Evliya says it is “a Bosnian joke, but not a tasteless one” (Boşnak latifesidir amma
zine mezeden hali değildir). That Evliya calls the language Bosnian and not Serbian
should not be confusing – he was unable to recognise the difference and frequently
used the terms interchangeably. Then he gives a detailed explanation of the words
used: “maçkalı means catlike and cheerful [prone to making jokes]” (ya‘ni maçkalı,
kedili ve gidili demektir), “laşkalı are the wretched” (ya‘ni laşkalı uğursuzlar), and
“pıçkalı means that their wives are prostitutes well aware of their vagines” (literally
“prostitues with vaginas”, meaning “insatiable”) (ve pıçkalı, ya‘ni avretleri fercli fahişe
demek). It seems that the inhabitants of Užice failed to supply Evliya with a clear
meaning of the latter word. The cited words seem to have been arranged as they are
for their meaning as much as, or even more, for a rhyme effect. The possibility should
not be ruled out either that the latter word was used to refer to a “character trait”,
much as it is still used today (in the sense of a weakling, a pussy). As evidenced by
Evliya, the inhabitants of Čačak retorted in the same way: “Men from Užice, men
from the butthole, closet homosexuals, guys giving [their buttholes] a lot” (Öziçeli
29 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 91; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 5. Kitap, 199.
30 Robert Dankoff, “Ayıp değil! (No Disgrace!)”, Journal of Turkish Literature 5 (2008): 77–78.
 Receptions of Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography 157

kuziçeli, ya‘ni epşet nihani ve midehed gulami çok, derler).31 Since the editors obvious-
ly have no knowledge of Serbian, it seems quite clear that they read the letter “kaf ”
(‫ )ك‬as a “k” instead of a “g”. So, the word küziçeli should be replaced with “güziçeli”.
In this way, the word in the pun, obligatorily rhymed, acquires its correct meaning.
These examples show that contemporary editors, if they do not know a local lan-
guage, can also make mistakes.
Those who know the local people of Čačak and Užice also know that rivalry and
teasing between them is still very much alive. As it appears from Evliya’s account, this
kind of rivalrous exchange is centuries old. It must have been so characteristic that
the locals believed they needed to present it in some way to the well-known travel
writer.
Evliya’s autograph contains a quite unexpected piece of information which is
omitted from the old Istanbul edition but which tallies with what we know from
long-neglected Jewish sources. Evliya Çelebi confirms that, apart from the Jewish
mahalle, there were in Belgrade seven communities of Karaites (Yedi cema’at add
olunur Cuhud-i Karayilerdir).32
The old Istanbul edition omitted sections of high relevance to the study of
everyday life in Belgrade. Evliya lists seven species of fish that could be found
on barkas (boats) landing at Belgrade’s docks on a daily basis: the beluga, the
sturgeon, the sterlet, the pike, the carp, the zander, and a species I have not yet
been able to identify, whose name, ismodik, may rather be red as smudić (or
smodić?) (morina ve mersin ve çiğa ve uştuka ve sazan ve üsmük ve ismodik).33 The
old Istanbul edition contains a shorter and in fact paraphrased version of this
section. The autograph speaks about various goods transported by 5,000–6,000
Danube and Sava boats docking every year at Belgrade, and about the parts from
which they come. It even names a few types of boats: tıransa, parga and tombaz.34
31 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 380; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 6. Kitap, 240. I am grateful
to Professor Slobodan Ilić of the Near East University, Nicosia, an authority on Ottoman erotic
literature, for his suggestions in translating unusual grammatical constructions and expressions
not found in dictionaries.
32 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 84; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 5. Kitap, 195; Fotić,
“Belgrade: A Muslim and Non-Muslim Cultural Centre”, 71–73.
33 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 92; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 5. Kitap, 200. I have not
found anything similar to the name of the species ismodik in the literature (Bogumil Hrabak,
“Ribolov i Riblja pijaca u Beogradu u XVI i XVII veku”, Godišnjak grada Beograda VII (1960):
59–66; Olga Zirojević, “Ribolov na srednjem Dunavu (XVI i XVII vek)”, Zbornik Matice srpske
za istoriju 49 (1994): 111–120; Josif Pančić, “Ribe u Srbiji (Pisces Serbiae)”, Glasnik Društva
Srbske Slovesnosti XII (1860): 500–667). I have consulted the facsimile of Evliya’s manuscript; the
editors did not make any error in transcribing the names of the fish species. According to Professor
Predrag Simonović of the Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade, if we assume that smudić is a
small smudj, then it is probably the Volga zander (Sander volgensis).
34 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 92; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 5. Kitap, 200.
158 Receptions of Evlİya Çelebİ’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography

These were merchant and transport vessels of various sizes, the tombaz being a
special type of a small pontoon boat used also for constructing temporary bridg-
es across rivers.
Šabanović’s edition lacks a considerable part of the text that describes (Sremska)
Mitrovica. Among other omitted data is the one that the hospitable hosts offered
the soldiers “honey sherbet” (bal şerbeti, bal suyu) and they all got drunk off of it.35
The chapter on Požega in the old edition missed out the section in which Evliya
says he took a look at the kadi’s sicil to learn about the duties and taxes levied on
the local population, and cites them all. In that kaza, for example, rice and paprika
(biber) were grown.36 This section provides a good example of Evliya’s acribia and his
methods of gathering information.
The account about (Kosovska) Mitrovica in the old edition omitted Evliya’s re-
mark – which he made after recounting the legend of Miloš Obilić’s death at the 1389
Battle of Kosovo – that his assassination of the sultan had been the reason for issuing
a kanun (law) that foreign envoys in audience with the sultan be held firmly by both
arms while kissing his eight-steps-long sleeve. Also omitted was the relevant sentence
in which Evliya notes that this fortress is locally called Kosovska Mitrovica (Kosova
Mitroviçesi derler) to make a distinction from Sremska Mitrovica (Sirem Mitroviçesi).37
If the late-nineteenth-century editor believed it unnecessary to retain the infor-
mation about “laudable grapes and rainier cherries” in Smederevo, we, on the other
hand, are grateful to Evliya for confirming their cultivation.38
*
And the fourth set of omissions made Hazim Šabanović himself. It seems inexplica-
ble why he omitted the section from Evliya’s seventh book which describes trav-
elling down the Danube from Golubac to Vidin. It is equally inexplicable why
he included only the account of Kladovo (Feth-i İslam). The old Istanbul edition
from which Šabanović did his translation contains an account of the section of the
journey between Golubac and Vidin. How was it possible that he did not rectify
this oversight in some of his later editions? This is by far the largest part of the
text that has remained inaccessible to the Serbian and Yugoslav public. Moreover,
it is a very interesting part of the Book of Travels. Not a word about the amazing
journey through the Djerdap section of the river from Golubac to Kladovo, with
descriptions of Dobra and Poreč, aits, settlements on the other bank of the river,
the manner of navigating through the Demir kapija (Iron Gates) and dangerous

35 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 353–357; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 6. Kitap, 102–103.
36 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 381; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 6. Kitap, 240.
37 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 269; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 5. Kitap, 292.
38 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 314; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 5. Kitap, 318.
 Receptions of Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography 159

whirpools, with a “thousand men towing boats upstream”, and loads being trans-
ported by carts. The fishing practices in that area also made an impression on the
great travel writer.39
Except for this major shortcoming, Šabanović’s other errors seem minor against
the immeasurable effort he made. For example, even though the old Istanbul edi-
tion mentions Belgrade’s Çukur han, Šabanović’s translation does not, almost cer-
tainly inadvertently.40 There are also minor, if important, omissions attributable to
Šabanović’s self-censorship, but these, too, are infrequent.
It should be reiterated that the only purpose of citing such examples is to illus-
trate the types of errors and omissions without any intention of making a definitive
assessment.
How should we proceed from this point? In my view, the approach developed
by the team of experts led by Professor Nenad Moačanin is the only right approach
given the state of scholarship in the twenty-first century: it is “necessary to translate
all parts of the autograph that concern the Croat lands and prepare a critical edition
with a critical apparatus, terminological comments and accompanying studies”.41 I
would add a few thoughts inspired by reading numerous studies on Evliya Çelebi
and his Book of Travels.
What principle in selecting geographical areas to be included in a new Serbian
edition should be adopted? The Croatian edition will encompass all of present-day
Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as some outlying areas in which Croats
are mentioned. The Serbian edition should by all means include these areas as well.
We must not confine ourselves to the area presented by Hazim Šabanović. The in-
clusion of as many sections as possible of the text referring to present-day Hungary,
Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania would result in an incomparably more com-
prehensive picture.
There are geographical areas, apart from the outlying ones, where Serbs are not
mentioned but where their presence has been clearly confirmed by other sources.
I believe that such sections of the text should also be included in the new edition
and supplemented with commentaries and explanations. I may mention as an ex-
ample the descriptions of Timisoara, where Serbs accounted for a high percentage
of the populations at the time, or of the part of Buda known as Taban (Tabahane in
Evliya’s book), later also as “Srpska varoš”, to which Evliya also devotes a considerable
amount of space.42 The same principle may be applied to the other cities in pres-
39 Evlijā Čelebī, Putopis, 551; [Evliya Çelebi], Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, hazırlayan Rifat Kilisli, 7,
(İstanbul, 1928), 439–471; Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 7. Kitap, 169–175.
40 Aleksandar Fotić, “Devet priloga istoriji turskog Beograda”, Godišnjak grada Beograda XXXVIII
(1991): 105.
41 Moačanin and Jurin-Starčević, “‘Novi’ Evlija Čelebi”, 90.
42 Evliyâ Çelebi, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, 5. Kitap, 201–207; ibid, 6. Kitap, 145–148.
160 Receptions of Evlİya Çelebİ’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography

ent-day Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania which are known to have had an
organised Serbian community. On the other hand, Evliya looked at the Danubian
settlements and way of life as a single coherent unit, providing information about
local places and curiosities regardless of the administrative unit they belonged to,
the sancaks of Semendire or Vidin, the eyalet of Temeşvar or the principality of
Wallachia. Since he understood the life in the Danube valley as a coherent whole, his
portrayal should not be mutilated by omitting the descriptions of the places which
today belong to Romania or Bulgaria, at least as far as Vidin or Orahovica.
Understanding the political, economic and social context of Evliya’s time and
of the space he toured, his view of the “world”, is vital to a proper analysis of Evliya’s
brilliant work. The book and numerous articles of Professor Robert Dankoff, the
greatest authority on Evliya’s Book of Travels, show clearly how important it is to get
to know Evliya as a person, to understand his mind, his beliefs, his endless curiosity
and, consequently, his impartial approach to what he saw with his own eyes or heard
second-hand.43
Many of Evliya’s observations reflect his view of the world. His are reflections of
an Ottoman intellectual of his times, an intellectual of an open mind and occasion-
ally fairly bold to depict things that break the established political, religious or moral
boundaries. Sometimes it really makes no sense to omit such observations simply
because they concern a distant area in which Serbs or Croats were not mentioned
or did not live. Practices and beliefs of various ethnic, religious or tribal communi-
ties, nature, animals and plants, everyday life, food habits, are certainly topics of a
remarkable broader importance. Let us take the example of several pages of Evliya’s
reflections on the Roma people.44 It is exceptionally important to learn how they
were seen by members of the Ottoman educated elite. This issue is of relevance to the
whole of the Balkans, regardless of the fact that he wrote these pages while travelling
present-day northern Greece.
For understanding the Book of Travels, it will be useful in more than one way
if the new translation is accompanied by another book, a volume of articles, R.
Dankoff ’s above all, but of other scholars too, elucidating Evliya’s language, beliefs,
approach, selection of topics and other features of the text itself. We will get a more
comprehensive picture if we know Evliya’s attitude towards Christians and adher-
ents of other religions, towards different races and peoples, towards hundreds of
different customs he saw himself or heard about, such as the practice of cannibal-
ism among the Kalmyks or the boastful stories of young men of Cairo about the

43 Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality; Dankoff and Tezcan, “An Evliya Çelebi Bibliography”.
44 Victor Friedman and Robert Dankoff, “The Earliest Text in Balkan (Rumelian) Romani: A
Passage from Evliya Çelebi’s Seyā!at-nāme”, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society 1, no. 1 (1991):
1–20.
 Receptions of Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography 161

excitement of making love to a female crocodile. Also important for understanding

Evliya’s mentality is how he experienced the organ music played in Vienna cathedral,
or the city of Vienna itself, what he thought of the discovery of the New World and
of the American natives he seems to have seen in the Austrian lands (he says that a
Spaniard, Padre, and a Portugese, Colon, first came to Bayezid II in 1484 with an
offer to discover the New World for him, and that they only turned to the pope and
the king of Spain after the sultan refused the offer).45
Evliya Çelebi wrote a travelogue of an encyclopaedic character, a work that can-
not be defined in terms of genre. His approach is unparallelled. He had no prede-
cessors to emulate; nor was there ever, in the centuries that followed, another author
of such broad interests, such energy and such passion for travelling and recording.
The new scholarly edition must be furnished with fascimiles. This is a requi-
site for any complete and critical edition. The bantering episode between Čačak
and Užice and the other cited examples show that translating from the Yapı Kredi
Yayınları edition as it is means relying on the reading of the editors who do not speak
Slavic or other local languagues, which unnecessarily opens room for speculation,
obstructs the proper interpretation of some terms and expressions, and occasionally
leads to further misinterpretations. How Evliya actually recorded precious specific
expressions in local languages and numerous toponyms and anthroponyms must not
be left to guesswork.
A new critical edition is a complex undertaking requiring the participation of
both philologists and historians. It is difficult today to find a translator as compe-
tent and knoweldgeable, and a remarkable historian at that, as Hazim Šabanović
was. The breadth of Evliya’s education requires a translator who has a command of
Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian. The last few decades saw the publication of
many studies on Evliya’s language, style and metaphors. It is only through well-de-
signed teamwork, possibly within a separate project, that we can arrive at an edition
able to withstand expert scrutiny. Any other approach would be superficial, and its
results bound to be of little value.
The wish to understand the Ottoman Empire and the period of Ottoman rule in
the Balkans is there but, regrettably, the attention-worthy literature in Balkan lan-
guages is not ample enough. A critical edition of this masterpiece of world travel
literature would be an excellent step in that direction. Only after that would it be
justified to have its popular and abridged versions.

45 Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality, 59–60, 62–63; Dankoff, “Ayıp değil!”, 83–84.

162 Receptions of Evlİya Çelebİ’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography

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EVLIYA
ÇELEBI
in the Borderlands
New Insights and
Novel Approaches
to the Seyahatname

[Vjeran Kursar
Kornelija Jurin Starčević
Nenad Moačanin]
For Publisher
Damir Agičić
© Copyright: Authors and Editors, Srednja Europa d.o.o., 2021.

Editors
Vjeran Kursar
Nenad Moačanin
Kornelija Jurin Starčević
Reviewers
Anđelko Vlašić
Joshua White
Graphic design and layout
Tvrtko Molnar
Banian ITC, IV. Ravnice 25, Zagreb

ISBN: 978-953-8281-33-4
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the National and University
Library in Zagreb: 001095733.

This publication was made possible with financial support

from the Ministry of Education and Science, Republic of Croatia.

Printed in Tiskara Zelina in March 2021.

 Vjeran Kursar, Nenad Moačanin,
Kornelija Jurin Starčević, eds.

Evliya Çelebi in the Borderlands:

New Insights and Novel Approaches
to the Seyahatname
(Western Balkans and Iran Sections)

Zagreb 2021.
Table of Contents

Vjeran Kursar, Nenad Moačanin, Kornelija Jurin Starčević

Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 5
Nuran Tezcan
Evliya Çelebi’s Balkan Travels and His Attitude Toward the Other ..................... 9
Robert Dankoff
A Puzzling Passage in Evliya Çelebi’s Description of Croatia ................................ 19
Nenad Moačanin
Ottoman Osijek as Seen by Evliya Çelebi .................................................................. 27
Vjeran Kursar
Evliya Çelebi and Drinking Culture in the Western Balkans
in the Seventeenth Century .................................................................................... 39
Fariba Zarinebaf
Evliya Çelebi in Azerbaijan
The Economic and Religious Landscape of a Borderland Region
in the Seventeenth Century .................................................................................... 63
Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont & Mohammadreza Abbasi Naderpoor
Notes et documents sur l’histoire urbaine
de Hamadan d’Evliyâ Çelebî à nos jours .............................................................. 79
Hakan T. Karateke
How Did the Volume Arrangement of Evliyā Çelebī’s
Travel Account Evolve? ............................................................................................ 129
Aleksandar Fotić
Receptions of Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname in Serbian Historiography
and Challenges of the Original Manuscript ........................................................ 149
Kornelija Jurin Starčević
The Autograph of Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatnâme as a “New” Source
for Croatian History: Preliminary Survey of Some Selected Examples ........ 165
Slobodan Ilić
On Misreadings, Deliberate Leaving-Outs, Second-Hand Translations, ...

and Lazy Editors: The Forthcoming Edition of Evliyā Çelebi’s Book

of Travel Through Bosnia and Dalmatia, and Some Critical Remarks
on Previous Editions of the Related Chapters .................................................... 189
Marta Andrić
The Prototype and Tentative Variants
of the Croatian Translation of the Seyahatname ................................................ 211