Evliya Çelebi in Bitlis: The Relevant Section of the "Seyahatname"

by Robert Dankoff (Editor)

In 1655 and 1656 Evliya Celebi found himself three different times in the eastern Anatolian town of Bitlis, the center of a quasi-independent Kurdish khanate having a long and tumultuous relationship with the Ottoman state. The account of Evliya's adventures in Bitlis, including a major expedition against the khan mounted by Evliya's patron Melek Ahmed Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Van, forms a coherent narrative which deserves to be studied on its own. The centerpiece of the book is a critical edition of three long extracts, amounting to forty-three folios of the autograph ms., form volumes IV and V of the "Seyahat- name," along with an annotated English translation on facing pages. The introduction discusses the narratological, historical, and linguistic aspects of the text, and there is a complete index of proper names.

435 pages, Leather Bound

First published April 1, 1990

About the author

Robert Dankoff is Professor Emeritus of Ottoman & Turkish Studies, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

In 1964, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University, and in 1971 got a Ph.D. from Harvard. He taught Arabic at Brandeis University as an assistant professor in 1969-1975. He taught Turkish in the University of California (1976-77), and the University of Arizona (1977-1979). He joined the department of Near Eastern languages and civilizations at Chicago University in 1979 as an assistant professor, where he became an associate professor in 1982, and a professor in 1987. He taught Turkish, Old Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Azeri, and Uzbek there until retiring in 2006.

His research interests lie in Ottoman Literature and Turkology. He has published extensively on Turkish texts from Central Asia and the Ottoman Empire, including text editions and translations of portions of the Seyahatname of Evliya Çele