![]() 2 VII 60b translation in An Ottoman Traveller : Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliyâ Çelebi (.).‘How many gods you have - God forbid! - that whenever you pass by one of them, you remove your hats and bow down and worship.’ I was on good terms with several priests and, partly as polemic, partly in jest, I said: There are so many statues and icons in this church, images of the sons of Adam, and so many idols - I had not seen so many since the conquest of Uyvar when I toured the great cathedrals of Poland, Czechia, Sweden, Hungary, Dunkerque, and the port of Danzig. So, for example, while he readily assimilates icons and statues in churches to “idols”, he also is at pains to record conversations with priests where he takes an ironic stance, even mocking his own prejudice, as in the Stephansdom in Vienna: While this underlying sentiment is clearly present, it is not held in a doctrinaire fashion. ![]() Religious levelģ The designation of Europeans as kâfir encapsulates Evliyâ’s religious attitude, a prejudgment, no doubt typical of Ottoman attitudes, as people on the other side, who hold mistaken beliefs and who are worthy objects of warfare considered as gazâ or jihad. So did Evliyâ “fall in love” with the kâfirs, meaning in particular the Europeans? More generally we may ask: What was Evliyâ’s attitude toward the Europeans, or the Franks as he calls them? To answer this, I will analyze his judgments on various levels: religious, political, social, technological and scientific, moral, and aesthetic. We may loosely translate Kafiristan as “Christendom” and Frengistan as “Europe.” But we should keep in mind that Kafiristan would not include the Christian populations of the Ottoman Empire, nor would Frengistan include what today we call Eastern Europe. ![]() 1Ģ In Evliyâ’s terminology, Kafiristan and Frengistan are more or less coterminous. He also befriended the Moscovite envoy during his travels in southern Russia, and expressed reluctance to leave him behind after returning to Azov in 1667 for which his Crimean host reproached him in the following terms: You have travelled so much in the land of the infidels that you have fallen in love with the infidels (Kâfiristanda geze geze kâfirlere mahabbet etmişsin). He became so absorbed watching this physician’s treatment of a patient with dropsy that he delayed returning to the Ottomans’ quarters until the time when the gates of Vienna are closed, and when he did return in the late evening he regaled the envoy, Kara Mehmed Pasha, with the amazing operation he had just observed… Another Viennese associate was the son of Marshall De Souche, with whom he became very close friends (gayet yakın dost), and who allowed him to inspect the Habsburg munitions. In Vienna he hobnobbed with a German physician who knew some Turkish and whom he used as an informant for phrases in German and Italian. On the personal level, Evliyâ had no problem befriending individual Europeans. ![]() Yet, the overall negative judgment that these terms imply does not hinder his positive evaluation of aspects of their civilization. 1 Robert Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliyâ Çelebi (Leiden: Brill, 2004 2nd edition, (.)Įuropeans are always referred to disparagingly: Fireng-i pür-reng, Fireng-i bed-reng, İfrenc-i pür-renc (tricky Franks).
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