Ten volumes of travels by an Ottoman gentleman who spent forty years crossing the empire; the first volume is a portrait of Istanbul: its imperial mosques and their foundations, its quarters, markets, guilds, baths and fountains.
Evliya Çelebi (1611–c. 1683) was born in Istanbul, the son of the court goldsmith, and set out in 1640 on journeys that took him from Vienna to Egypt and from the Crimea to Iran. His first volume describes his native city, beginning with its imperial mosques. For each he lists the dependencies founded with it (colleges, schools, hospital, kitchen, guest-house, bath, caravanserai), and for the city as a whole he counts, with his usual enthusiasm for numbers, the quarters, mosques, baths, fountains and houses.
His figures are often exaggerated and his stories embroidered, but his picture of the city as a mosaic of neighbourhoods, each with its mosque and its imam, grouped round the great foundations of the sultans, is borne out by the Ottoman registers.
The book, part by part
I Book I: Istanbul
The imperial mosques and their külliyes; the quarters and their mosques; the guilds and markets.
Rules: The quarter and its mosque · The külliye: a mosque with its charities