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With a preface by Soraiya Faroqhi and a postscript by Gottefried Hagan, this work crowns the research of Robert Dankoff on Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname , particularly as it represents the Ottoman worldview. I am even more pleased to introduce this book because I was one of those who heard Dankoff speak of its beginnings in 1999, at the conference of the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris. It is true that this is not a complete critical edition of the Seyahatname (The Book of Travels). The complete edition of the book by the Turkish scholar Yapi ve Kredi Yayinlari is forthcoming, thanks in part to Dankoff, who contributes to volume nine. However, many of the secrets of the manuscript have already become available to us through several of Dankoff's previous publications, notably An Evliya Çelebi Glossary: Unusual Dialectal and Foreign Words in the Seyahat-name (1991); Sources of Oriental Languages and Literatures , ed. Finasi Tekin and Gönül Alpay Tekin; Evliya Çelebi inBitlis (1990); and A Guide to the Seyâhât-Nâme of Evliyâ Çelebî , in Materialien zu Evliyâ Çelebî II , with Klaus Kreiser (1992); and Evliyâ Çelebî in Albania and Adjacent Regions (Kosovo, Montenegro, Ohrid), with Robert Elsie (2000).
Evliya Çelebi was the first Ottoman author to give an almost complete description of the Ottoman Empire and its hinterlands (excluding North Africa). Dankoff is the first scholar to attempt a cohesive analysis of the Seyahatname . The book is composed of six chapters (as well as a glossary, bibliography, and...