The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It - Course Information

204 ~ THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE WORLD AROUND IT ~
which he was well informed indeed. Yet there is no denying that he sometimes
told tales about places where he had obviously never been; but once again, even
a person as original as Evliya was in the end a product of his milieu. We can
therefore assume, although proof is impossible, that when he wrote about exotic
localities, Evliya told stories reasonably consonant with the world view of his
contemporaries, particularly since he himself liked to stress his knowledge of
oral literature. 82 Moreover, we must keep in mind that, in seventeenth-century
Istanbul or Bursa, story-telling was esteemed as a form of art, and by no means
merely an amusement for the illiterate.
~ Evliya Çelebi’s stories about Europe
Holland and the way thither
A good example of Evliya’s reporting about exotic places concerns Holland,
along with the city of Amsterdam; in the author’s lifetime, this was the recognized
centre of the European ‘world economy’. 83 Given the presence of a Dutch
embassy and traders from Holland in Istanbul, it should have been easy enough
to acquire information about this city without ever leaving the capital of the sultans.
84 Men with bookish interests were likely to have heard about, or even
perused, Dutch atlases; as we have noted, these publications were an important
source of information for well-to-do Ottomans interested in seventeenth-century
world geography. In addition, quite a few Armenian traders permanently established
themselves in Amsterdam, and their relatives and friends in the sultan’s
territories must have heard from them what life was like in the Netherlands. 85
Thus, unlike more exotic European towns, there must have been some notions
about Amsterdam and its surroundings circulating among educated Ottomans. It
is unfortunate that we do not possess any written reactions of such people to the
extraordinary tales told by Evliya, and probably by professional storytellers as
well.
References to Holland and Amsterdam occur within the sixth volume of
Evliya Çelebi’s travel account. 86 The author’s journey began in Uyvar and supposedly
took him to a variety of countries and peoples. It was apparent to the
author himself that he did not possess much information on Bohemia, the Germanies
or even the Netherlands. To explain this deficiency, he pointed out that he
had accompanied an army of raiding Tatars, who, as every Ottoman of his time
was well aware, normally limited themselves to booty-taking in the open
countryside, but were as a rule unable to take on fortified sites. 87 On the other
hand, recounting the successes of this raid provided Evliya with an edifying
adventure story, which probably interested both himself and his potential readers
much more than the countries in which these events supposedly took place.
It is all but impossible to situate on a map the peoples, kingdoms and countries
mentioned by Evliya, even though the terms Filimenk/Fiyaman (Dutch, Flem-