Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. I — Edition Insights

Diction and the Enumeration of Authority

Evliya’s diction is marked by a fondness for catalogues. In the biographical sketch alone, he lists “Defterdár Iskender Chelebi; Hyder Chelebi, of Gallipoli; Lufti Beg, of the harem” and many more, each name carrying a title and often a place of origin. This enumerative style serves a dual purpose: it demonstrates the author’s access to high circles and it structures the world through hierarchies. The reader is constantly reminded that this is a world of offices, ranks, and fixed positions. Even when describing the “Begs of Sultán Suleïmán’s Reign,” Evliya appends their achievements—building mosques, winning victories—as if each life were a summary entry in a biographical dictionary.

Dialogue and Reported Speech

Though the excerpts are brief, they hint at Evliya’s use of reported speech to animate his narrative. The translator’s note mentions that the author “records the building of the mosque of Sultán Ahmed” and that his father “executed” its gate. Such moments imply that Evliya often includes what people said or were said to have done. The text’s reliance on oral testimony—family stories, official pronouncements—gives it a conversational texture. When Evliya writes that a certain sheikh “is the author of an historical work,” he is not merely citing a fact but positioning himself within a chain of transmission. This technique makes the travelogue feel like a spoken account, full of voices from the past.

Descriptive Precision in Place and Number

Evliya’s descriptions are anchored in numbers. The Kanún-námeh section lists provinces by “Sanjaks, Ziámets, Timárs” with exact counts: “Rúmeïli contains 24 Sanjaks, 1,227 Ziámets, 12,377 Timárs.” This statistical impulse extends to architecture and geography. When he notes that his ancestor “erected one hundred shops” near a mosque, the figure is not decorative but functional—it conveys scale and endowment. The author sees the world as quantifiable, and his prose mirrors that conviction. Even the translator’s advertisement remarks on the “system of orthography” used for proper names, underscoring the work’s commitment to precision over fluency.

Structure and the List as Narrative Device

The structure of the first volume is built around lists. The biographical sketch is a list of ancestors and officials; the Kanún-námeh is a list of provinces and their administrative divisions. This is not a flaw but a deliberate authorial choice. Evliya organizes his experience through taxonomy, grouping people and places by category. The effect is that the reader moves through the text as through a cabinet of curiosities, each entry discrete yet connected by the author’s ordering mind. The narrative does not flow in a linear story but accumulates detail, much like a gazetteer. This structural preference reflects a worldview where knowledge is stored in lists, and authority is established by enumeration.

Readers approaching this volume should expect a work that prioritizes catalog over plot. Evliya’s voice is most audible in the rhythm of his lists and the specificity of his numbers. Pay attention to what he chooses to count—soldiers, shops, scholars—and what he omits. The translation by Joseph von Hammer preserves the original’s formal diction, but the underlying authorial choices remain: a mind that sees the world as a series of named, ranked, and enumerated entities. This is travel writing as administrative survey, and its pleasures lie in the details.