Evliya, the son of Dervish Mehmet, was born in Stamboul on the tenth of Muharrem in the year after the Hegira 1020 (AD1611) in the reign of Ahmet I. As Evliya writes in the Seyahatname, in the section entitled Anecdotes of the Youth of the Author, ‘At the time when my mother was lying in with me, the humble Evliya, no fewer than seventy holy men were assembled at our house. At my birth the sheikh of the Mevlevi dervishes took me into his arms, threw me into the air, and catching me again, said, “May this boy be exalted in life!”’ After relating other anecdotes concerning these scholars and divines and the comments they made at the time of his birth, Evliya concludes with this characteristic statement: ‘The short subject of this long discussion is to show that I, the humble Evliya, was favoured with the particular attention of these saints and holy men.’

Evliya came from an old and distinguished Turkish family which traced its lineage back to Sheikh Ahmet Yesov, who was the teacher of Hadji Bekta, the founder of the Bektaşi order of dervishes. Evliya’s father had been Standard-Bearer in the army of Süleyman the Magnificent, and was at the Sultan’s side when he died at the siege of Sziget in 1566. During the reign of Ahmet I, Dervish Mehmet became Chief of the Goldsmiths, a trade to which Evliya was apprenticed when he was a young man. His uncle and patron, Melek Ahmet Paşa, was a Grand Vezir in the reign of Murat IV (1623–40) and Evliya accompanied him on many of his missions and campaigns. His grandfather, Yavuz Ersinan, was Standard-Bearer in the army of Sultan Mehmet II and was present when Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453. (Those two generations of Evliya’s family span at least two centuries; either his forebears were incredibly long-lived or the intervening ancestors were foreshortened in the telescope of Evliya’s imagination.)

After the Conquest, Yavuz Ersinan was allotted a plot of land in Unkapanı (the Flour Store), the district around the Stamboul shore of the present-day Atatürk Bridge. The mosque which he founded at that time, about 1455, is still standing and in use; it is probably the oldest surviving mosque in the city. It is called Sağrıcılar Camii, the Mosque of the Leather-Workers, after the artisans who have practised their trade in that neighbourhood for centuries. When Yavuz Ersinan died he was buried in the garden behind his mosque, and his moss-covered tombstone can still be seen there today. But the family homestead in which Evliya was born has vanished without a trace.

When he was six years old Evliya was enrolled in the school of Hamid Efendi in the section called Fil Yokuşu, the Path of the Elephant. (The street from which this section takes its name is still in existence, winding up from the shore of the Golden Horn to the heights above Unkapanı.) Evliya studied in Hamid Efendi’s school for seven years, during which his tutor was Evliya Mehmet Efendi, Chief Imam in the court of Sultan Murat IV. While there he studied calligraphy, music, grammar and the Koran, in the reading and singing of which he particularly excelled. After leaving Hamid Efendi’s school Evliya continued his studies with Evliya Mehmet Efendi, who appears to have given him a remarkably broad education. As Evliya once remarked to Murat IV: ‘I am versed in seventy-two sciences; does your majesty wish to hear something of Persian, Arabic, Syriac, Greek or Turkish? Something of the different tunes of music, or poetry in various measures?’ To which the Sultan replied: ‘What a boasting fellow this is! Is he a Revani (a prattler), and is this all nonsense, or is he capable of performing all that he says?’ We have only Evliya’s own testimony to prove that he was no idle boaster, but an imaginative elaborator of the truth.

When Evliya was about twenty years old, so he tells us, he began making excursions in the vicinity of Istanbul and thereby decided to become a traveller. ‘It was in the time of the illustrious reign of Murat IV that I began to think of extensive travels, in order to escape from the power of my father, mother and brethren. Forming a design of travelling over the whole earth, I entreated God to give me health for my body and faith for my soul. I sought the conversations of dervishes, and when I heard a description of the seven climates and of the four quarters of the earth, I became still more anxious to see the world, to visit the Holy Land, Cairo, Damascus, Mecca and Medina, and to prostrate myself on the purified soil of the places where the Prophet, the glory of all creatures, was born and died.’

With that hope Evliya prayed for divine guidance, a request which was eventually granted to him on his twenty-first birthday. He writes of how he fell asleep that night in his father’s house and dreamt that he was in the nearby mosque of Ahi Çelebi. No sooner had he arrived there, in his dream, than the doors of the mosque opened and a brilliant crowd entered, all saying the morning prayer. Evliya tells us that he was lost in astonishment at the sight of this colourful assembly and that he looked upon his neighbour and said: ‘May I ask, my lord, who you are, and what is your illustrious name?’ His neighbour answered and said that he was Sa’d Vakkas, one of the ten evangelists and the patron of archers. Evliya kissed the hand of Sa’d Vakkas and asked further: ‘Who are the refulgent multitude on my right hand?’ ‘They are all blessed saints and pure souls, the spirits of the followers of the Prophet,’ answered Sa’d Vakkas, and then told Evliya that the Prophet himself, along with his grandsons Hasan and Hüseyin, were expected in the mosque at any moment to perform the morning service. No sooner had Sa’d Vakkas said this than flashes of lightning burst from the doors of the mosque and the room filled with a crowd of saints and martyrs. ‘It was the Prophet!’ Evliya writes, ‘overshadowed by his green banner, covered by his green veil, carrying his staff in his right hand, his sword girt on his thigh, with the Imam Hasan on his right side and the Imam Hüseyin on his left. As he placed his right foot on the threshold he cried out, “Bismillah!” and throwing off his veil, said, “Health unto thee, O my people!” The whole assembly answered: “Unto thee be health, O prophet of God, Lord of the Nations!”’ Evliya tells us that he trembled in every limb, but still he was able to give a detailed description of the Prophet’s appearance, saying that it agreed exactly with that given in the Hallyehi Khakani: ‘The veil on his face was a white shawl and his turban was formed of a white sash with twelve folds; his mantle was of camel’s hair inclining to yellow; on his neck he wore a yellow woollen shawl. His boots were yellow and in his turban was stuck a toothpick.’

Evliya then tells us that the Prophet advanced to the mihrab of the mosque, struck his knees with his right hand, and commanded Evliya to take the lead in saying the morning prayers. Evliya did so and the Prophet followed by reciting the Fatihah, the first chapter of the Koran, along with other verses. After other prayers were pronounced by Evliya and Belal, the first müezzin of Islam, the morning prayers were concluded. ‘The service was closed with a general cry of “Allah!” which very nearly woke me from my sleep,’ Evliya writes. He then goes on to tell of how Sa’d Vakkas took him by the hand and escorted him into the Prophet’s presence, saying, ‘Thy loving and faithful servant Evliya entreats thy intercession.’ Evliya, weeping in his excitement and confusion, kissed the Prophet’s hands and received his blessings, along with the assurance that his desire to travel would be fulfilled. The Prophet then repeated the Fatihah, followed by all of his sainted companions, after which Evliya went round and kissed their hands, receiving from each his blessings. ‘Their hands were perfumed with musk, ambergris, spikenard, sweet-basil, violets and carnations; but that of the Prophet himself smelt of nothing but saffron and roses, felt when touched as if it had no bones, and was as soft as cotton. The hands of the other prophets had the odour of quinces, that of Abu Bekr had the fragrance of lemons, Omar’s smelt like ambergris, Osman’s like violets, Ali’s like jasmine, Hasan’s like carnations, and Hüseyin’s like white roses … Then the Prophet himself pronounced the parting salutation from the mihrab, after which he advanced towards the door and the whole illustrious assembly, giving me various greetings and blessings, went out of the mosque.’

The last to leave was Sa’d Vakkas, who took the quiver from his belt and gave it to Evliya, saying, ‘Go, be victorious with thy bow and arrow; be in God’s keeping, and receive from me the good tidings that thou shalt visit the tombs of all the prophets and holy men whose hands thou hast now kissed. Thou shalt travel through the whole world and be a marvel among men.’ Then Sa’d Vakkas kissed Evliya’s hand and departed from the mosque, leaving Evliya alone at the end of his dream.

‘When I awoke,’ writes Evliya, ‘I was in great doubt whether what I had seen was a dream or reality, and I enjoyed for some time the beatific contemplations which filled my soul. Having afterwards performed my ablutions and offered up the morning prayer, I crossed over from Constantinople to the suburb of Kasımpaşa and consulted the interpreter of dreams, İbrahim Efendi, about my vision. From him I received the comfortable news that I would become a great traveller, and after making my way through the world, with the intercession of the Prophet, would close my career by being admitted into Paradise. I then retired to my humble abode, applied myself to the study of history, and began a description of my birthplace, Istanbul, that envy of kings, the celestial haven and stronghold of Macedonia.’

And so Evliya began the travels which eventually took him all over the Ottoman Empire, which at that time extended from central Persia to Gibraltar and from southern Egypt to the frontiers of Russia. He also accompanied the Turkish Embassy to Vienna in 1664, after which he travelled widely in northern and western Europe, returning by way of Poland and the Crimea. He took part in many military campaigns, the first of which was the siege and capture of Erivan in Persia by Murat IV in 1635, and he claims to have fought in twenty-two battles. But after each of these journeys he returned to Stamboul, and the largest part of his extant work is concerned with a description of his native city, its people and their life. He tells us that he travelled for forty years, passed through the countries of eighteen monarchs, and heard one hundred and forty-seven languages, but that nothing which he saw on his journeys compared in beauty or interest with his birthplace. He finally seems to have settled down in the Thracian city of Edirne, where he spent the closing decade of his life, dying there in about 1680 at the age of seventy. Evliya is thought to have spent those last years completing the Seyahatname, after the completion of those travels which had in fact taken him through ‘the seven climates and the four quarters of the earth’.

But one wonders why Evliya left Stamboul as his life was drawing to a close. Perhaps, like so many writers before and after his time, he may have felt it necessary to escape from the pleasant company of his friends in order to get on with his work. But how Stamboul must have missed Evliya when he left for the last time, and how Evliya must have missed Stamboul.