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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. As long time listeners to the show, No,

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Speaker 1: Holly and I joined this podcast, but the show has

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Speaker 1: been around all the way since two thousand and eight.

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Speaker 1: We had a whole series of other hosts before our time,

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Speaker 1: and even though Holly and I have been digging around

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Speaker 1: through our own archive for six years at this point,

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Speaker 1: we still stumble across episodes that have just not ever

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Speaker 1: caught our attention before. And that happened to me with

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Speaker 1: today's classic, which is on Evil at Chellaby. Elia Chelloby

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Speaker 1: was a seventeenth century traveler from the Ottoman Empire who

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Speaker 1: spent more than forty years chronicling all his journeys. This

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Speaker 1: episode dates back to from previous hosts Sarah and Bablina.

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Speaker 1: So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class

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Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello in law, come

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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Fair Dowdy and I'm DeLine to

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Speaker 1: Chuck Rebording and Devilina. I have a question for you.

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Speaker 1: What's that? Have you ever kept a travel journal? I mean,

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Speaker 1: I know you like to travel a lot. I have

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Speaker 1: kept well, I have attempted to, but I usually end

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Speaker 1: up getting them. I have a collection of beautiful journals

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Speaker 1: that I bought throughout the years, and I end up

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Speaker 1: taking them and I fill out a page. And then

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Speaker 1: I realized there's this big competition between actually wanting to

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Speaker 1: do things and having time to write about the things

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Speaker 1: while I'm on vacation, and then when you get back,

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Speaker 1: you get so busy that you just don't have time

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Speaker 1: to rerecord everything happens to me too, if I'm lucky,

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Speaker 1: I'll start writing on the plane ride home and maybe

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Speaker 1: fill in the briefest details. So try to imagine trying

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Speaker 1: to keep a travel journal for forty years now, and

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Speaker 1: imagine that our expeditions included not just classic traveler high

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Speaker 1: points you know, meals you eight monuments, he saw people

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Speaker 1: you met, that kind of thing, but events like wars

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Speaker 1: and rebellions and pirate attacks. I mean, I'm engine having

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Speaker 1: time for that. I mean, I think I would make

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Speaker 1: time to write about a pirate attack that would that

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Speaker 1: would warrant an entry for sure. So our subject today,

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Speaker 1: evlah Chellaby is a seventeenth century Ottoman gentleman, and he's

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Speaker 1: considered by many people to be one of the world's

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Speaker 1: greatest travelers and by extension, one of the world's greatest

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Speaker 1: travel writers. He kept a two thousand, four hundred folio

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Speaker 1: record of his journeys. He called it the Saya Hotnomy,

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Speaker 1: or a Book of Travels, and it's the longest travel

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Speaker 1: account in Islamic literature, maybe even the longest travel account

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Speaker 1: in the world. And from about age thirty until his

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Speaker 1: death in his seventies, Evlah was on the move, and

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Speaker 1: for as long as he traveled, he kept on writing,

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Speaker 1: covering his journeys across rivers of ice in the far

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Speaker 1: northern reaches of the Ottoman Empire, to the Sahara Desert

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Speaker 1: and the Nile River in the south. And because Evlah

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Speaker 1: went to places that many others didn't even bother to

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Speaker 1: visit or at least document, his record has become a

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Speaker 1: key source for archaeologists, joag graffers, and cultural historians. And

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Speaker 1: that's why, in addition to discussing high points from Evliah's

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Speaker 1: remarkable travels, we're also going to talk about the strange

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Speaker 1: history of the Seahotana May, which, at nearly four hundred

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Speaker 1: years old, is only now becoming an item of world interest.

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Speaker 1: But before we get to that, there's the matter of

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Speaker 1: Evliah's home bound years. Of course, he didn't start traveling

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Speaker 1: until he was about thirty. So we mentioned Evliah was

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Speaker 1: a gentleman, and in fact, his name Chellaby means gentleman,

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Speaker 1: so appropriately enough. He grew up in the cultured atmosphere

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Speaker 1: of the Ottoman court, where his father was the Sultan's

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Speaker 1: chief goldsmith, and his mother was an Abcasian, possibly a

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Speaker 1: slave girl given to the goldsmith in marriage by the Sultan,

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Speaker 1: who told him, grand Aga, you're an old man, but

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Speaker 1: God willing from this maiden you will have an angel

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Speaker 1: like world adorning son. And sure enough, Evliah was born

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Speaker 1: nine months ten days after that in sixteen eleven in

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Speaker 1: istanbul And, and he started his education as other children

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Speaker 1: of his class would have, at the Madressa, which was

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Speaker 1: Arabic school, where he would have learned to recite the

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Speaker 1: Koran become a prayer caller, and he would have also

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Speaker 1: studied languages to Turkish, Persian, Arabic plus Greek and Latin,

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Speaker 1: and stories of Roman emperors and Alexander the Great that

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Speaker 1: he picked up from the non Muslims who worked in

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Speaker 1: his father's gold shop. And when he wasn't studying, Eliah

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Speaker 1: still learned in a different way. He roamed a standbull,

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Speaker 1: watching artisans, exploring mosques, and occasionally even attending court with

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Speaker 1: his father. By his teens, Eliot could recite the entire

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Speaker 1: Koran from memory. This took him about eight hours to do,

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Speaker 1: and he'd do it every single Thursday, and he said

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Speaker 1: he was proud to have maintained this tradition through his life.

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Speaker 1: It was during one of those restations, in fact, that

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Speaker 1: he got kind of his big break in a sense.

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Speaker 1: During a recital, Elia was summoned by the reigning Sultan

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Speaker 1: Murad the Fourth, who to him how long his recitations took.

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Speaker 1: And eight hours must have seemed like a really good

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Speaker 1: answer to him, because the Sultan essentially then told him

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Speaker 1: that they were going to be friends. Okay, so what

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Speaker 1: does being friends with the sultan really entail to me?

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Speaker 1: It sounds a bit like pursuing a higher education. Because ever,

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Speaker 1: Leo was soon set up with a tutor, a calligraphy master,

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Speaker 1: a spiritual advisor, a music teacher for music and singing,

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Speaker 1: a grammar instructor, plus his old master for continued Koran studies.

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Speaker 1: And so his job essentially became to read and write,

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Speaker 1: you know, study during the day and night, refine his

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Speaker 1: manners dressed nicely and recite entertaining things for the Sultan,

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Speaker 1: really showing off his learning, and he he gives a

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Speaker 1: sampling of what this usually involved in his book of Travels,

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Speaker 1: he recounts an early meeting where he asked the Sultan, look,

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Speaker 1: I will what exactly do you want to hear me recite?

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Speaker 1: You know, literature? I can do Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, Syriac, Greek,

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Speaker 1: maybe a medley of musical forms, maybe a selection of

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Speaker 1: different kinds of verse poetry. The Sultan actually even calls

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Speaker 1: him out on showing off so much, because in between

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Speaker 1: cataloging all this knowledge, this huge platter of things he

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Speaker 1: can recite for the Sultan, he throwing puns and make

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Speaker 1: witty remarks, some of them kind of risque, and polished

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Speaker 1: the whole performance off by somersaulting out of the room.

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Speaker 1: I mean, this kid, this kid knew how to put

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Speaker 1: on a show for sure. So his next two years

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Speaker 1: at court involved lots of study, beautiful books, calligraphy practice,

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Speaker 1: and those audiences with the Sultan and fancy presence as well.

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Speaker 1: A silver ink pot studded with jewels wasn't one notable

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Speaker 1: one and also a writing board inlaid with mother of pearl.

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Speaker 1: Good accessories for the scholar. Yeah, a gem encrusted back scratcher,

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Speaker 1: that's a bonus, So handy. But he became especially valued

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Speaker 1: when we're of the fourth was feeling down, since he

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Speaker 1: could crack him up with as near constant jokes. Courtiers

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Speaker 1: would hurry evliah In and Muraud would say, quote, look,

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Speaker 1: the dispeller of woe has arrived. Sometimes his duties would

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Speaker 1: be a little more solemn, Koran recitations, leading calls to prayer,

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Speaker 1: singing sad songs, things like that. Others were more outrageous,

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Speaker 1: such as supervising the Sultan's wrestling matches and avoiding vomiting

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Speaker 1: on the Sultan when he'd pick him up and spin

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Speaker 1: him around, which sounds pretty nerve racking, not something you'd

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Speaker 1: want to do to the Sultan, so it seems like

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Speaker 1: with such a prestigious position, though minus the spinning of course. Ever,

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Speaker 1: Leo would really enjoy every moment spent in his hometown

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Speaker 1: of Istanbul and at the palace, But from about age

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Speaker 1: twenty onward he was itching to get away. He wanted

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Speaker 1: to get outside of the city. He had only visited

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Speaker 1: towns just outside of the city walls. So to make

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Speaker 1: up for that, since he didn't have travel magazine studied,

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Speaker 1: he'd quiz dervishes about their travels and learn about the

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Speaker 1: seven climbs, the four quarters of the Earth. Really just

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Speaker 1: um make the travel bug he already had really even

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Speaker 1: more intense ready to go. In addition to his court connection,

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Speaker 1: Evliah had family pressures keeping him at home though as well.

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Speaker 1: In an early book he wonders quote how to get

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Speaker 1: free of pressure from mother and father and teacher and brother.

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Speaker 1: I think that's probably a sentiment a lot of people

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Speaker 1: can relate to. It must have been on his mind

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Speaker 1: a lot, because when Elia was in his early twenties,

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Speaker 1: he had a dream, but not just a dream. It

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Speaker 1: was a dream of vision, which appears sometimes in podcasts

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Speaker 1: they do they've popped up recently, I feel like now

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Speaker 1: and again. But in this particular dream, he found himself

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Speaker 1: with early Islamic saints and the prophet Mohammed, who asked

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Speaker 1: Evlia to call the morning prayer. After he was done,

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Speaker 1: Eliah went back before the prophet to ask for shaffat,

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Speaker 1: or intercession, but messed up and asked instead for a

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Speaker 1: similar sounding word in Ottoman Turkish say a hot or travel,

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Speaker 1: so Mohammed promises him both, plus visits to the tombs

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Speaker 1: of saints and prophets, which do end up coming along

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Speaker 1: with his later travel. So according to the Ottoman historian

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Speaker 1: Caroline Finkel, this type of dream vision is a common

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Speaker 1: occurrence of literature from this time and when that Evilia

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Speaker 1: himself used in later accounts of his travels. But she

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Speaker 1: also notes that in this case he sounds especially genuine,

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Speaker 1: like it really was a life changing moment for him,

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Speaker 1: not that he woke up from his dream and started packing,

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Speaker 1: though it still took about ten years before Elia could

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Speaker 1: get away uh the first time, accompanied by a friend

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Speaker 1: visiting nearby Borsa, and on the trip back home, he

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Speaker 1: decided not to tell his folks, but to set out

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Speaker 1: again and head off to the north Anatolian coast um

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Speaker 1: to to tour that rage in a little bit. Since

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Speaker 1: he was traveling with a newly appointed governor, this also

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Speaker 1: started a trend of journeying and the entourage of various

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Speaker 1: public officials, so he'd serve various functions along the way,

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Speaker 1: including things like prayer caller, tax collector, courier, envoy, customs clerk,

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Speaker 1: even a mom Basically anything that allowed him to tour

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Speaker 1: with a retinue or run specific errands to places that

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Speaker 1: he was interested in. Imagine a more practical version of

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Speaker 1: his work for the Sultan, and that's kind of what

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Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, and it afforded him not only free

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Speaker 1: travel of course, a job that it goes along with traveling,

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Speaker 1: but a certain amount of protection to You've got to

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Speaker 1: imagine bandits in the woods and rebels and pirates. Of course,

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Speaker 1: as we've already mentioned, they were traveling with a group

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Speaker 1: like this would have been a safer way to go.

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Speaker 1: So Everiot eventually began calling himself despite all those other

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Speaker 1: professions to lean and just rattled off world traveler and

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Speaker 1: boon companion to mankind, which I think sums him up

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Speaker 1: pretty well. It does. Many of his journeys were in

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Speaker 1: the company of his mother's kinsman, the one time Grand

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Speaker 1: Vizier Melik Ahmed Pasha, and they traveled to modern Ukraine, Sophia, Iran, Iraq, Transylvania,

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Speaker 1: while Akia and mal Davia, Poland Bosnia, just a lot

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Speaker 1: of places all over the place. And Evila's range also

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Speaker 1: starts to sound more impressive when you consider he was

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Speaker 1: usually taking the hard away on these travels on horseback.

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Speaker 1: After a six forty one shipwreck in the Black Sea,

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Speaker 1: um he was kind of put off sea travel and

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Speaker 1: completely all of his expeditions were overland. When he finally

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Speaker 1: hopped on a boat about thirty years later attempting to

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Speaker 1: visit Cyprus, he was quickly rewarded with that pirate attack

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Speaker 1: that we mentioned before, so it turned out that sea

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Speaker 1: travel was just not for him. Out of commission for

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Speaker 1: all sea travel, and after Melik Ahmed died in sixteen

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Speaker 1: sixty two, evilah no longer had this May Jr. Patron

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Speaker 1: this man who he was mostly traveling with. But according

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Speaker 1: to Caroline Finkel's article on him in History Today, he

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Speaker 1: also didn't have anything stopping him anymore from going exactly

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Speaker 1: where he pleased. So he ended up going to work

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Speaker 1: as a cavalryman and serving in several major engagements before

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Speaker 1: taking part in a really notable peace mission to Vienna

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Speaker 1: which established a twenty year truce between the Habsburgs and

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Speaker 1: the Ottomans. And everley Is account of his trip to

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Speaker 1: Vienna is really one of the best love parts of

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Speaker 1: the Book of Travels because it's so full of both

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Speaker 1: day to day beauties and the horrors of the seventeenth century. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: For example, he's impressed by the organ at St. Stephen's

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Speaker 1: and notes that it quote fills the lungs with blood

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Speaker 1: and the eyes with tears. But he's also really taken

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Speaker 1: by an operation to remove a bullet from a man's

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Speaker 1: head and the doctrine that he himself receives to stabilize

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Speaker 1: three teeth that had been hit by a javelin. And

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Speaker 1: he's kind of scandalized by social customs he sees when

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Speaker 1: he's in Vienna, for instance, men and women socializing together

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Speaker 1: in public, women socializing without their husband's present. But at

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Speaker 1: the same time, even though this clearly disturbs him, he

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Speaker 1: finds no problems talking with and even befriending individual European.

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Speaker 1: So after this epic trip to Vienna, Evliah moved up

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Speaker 1: to Krimea, up the Volga to Kazan, and then briefly

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Speaker 1: back to Istanbul. These trips back to Istanbul are really

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Speaker 1: really short and um come with large spans of travel

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Speaker 1: in between. By sixteen sixty eight he visited Greece. This

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Speaker 1: is another really famous part of the book of Travels

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Speaker 1: because he described the Parthenon, which was then functioning as

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Speaker 1: a mosque. And the reason why this account is so

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Speaker 1: particularly important and why the detail is so valued, is

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Speaker 1: because just about twenty years after Evlas saw the Parthenon,

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Speaker 1: the building was of course blown up when a cannon

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Speaker 1: ignited and Ottoman munition stump. I mean, some it's easy

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Speaker 1: to forget that be ruined Parthenon didn't used to be

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Speaker 1: quite as ruined as it is today. In sixteen sixty

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Speaker 1: nine he saw the Ottomans take a Cretan fortress after

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Speaker 1: a twenty one year siege, and he had the honor

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Speaker 1: of calling the first prayer there. And then in sixteen

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Speaker 1: seventy one, at about age sixty, he embarked on his

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Speaker 1: pilgrimage to Mecca, again, dreaming of blessings, and this time

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Speaker 1: from his father and his former teacher. And it's interesting

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Speaker 1: too he did, I mean, of course, for a man

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Speaker 1: who traveled so much and who was so devout, it

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Speaker 1: seems like he would have tried to get to Mecca

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Speaker 1: earlier in his life. He did try to go, he

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Speaker 1: had events waylay him. So this was a real lifetime

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Speaker 1: goal to finally be making it to Mecca. And when

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Speaker 1: he did it he went with three companions, eight servants,

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Speaker 1: and fifteen Arabian horses. So Ellie ended up spending twice

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Speaker 1: the time that a normal trip from Istanbul to Mecca

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Speaker 1: would take to get After his pilgrimage, evil Is settled

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Speaker 1: in Cairo, surveyed the city, and made a short attempt

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Speaker 1: to find the source of the Nine. But he died

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Speaker 1: around sixty four, likely in Cairo, though the exact date

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Speaker 1: and location are still unknown. Okay, so now that we've

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Speaker 1: covered in brief, of course every is forty years of travel.

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Speaker 1: What did he have to say about all these places?

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Speaker 1: What mide? What he had to say so unique in

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Speaker 1: the first place, and to a certain extent his work

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Speaker 1: is fairly formulaic. In towns or cities. He'll write about topography, fortifications, monuments,

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Speaker 1: you know, what you might expect from a newcomer to

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Speaker 1: a town. But he'll also talk about dress and cuisine, occupations,

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Speaker 1: class structure, medicine, naming, customs, speech, literature, hygiene, which, by

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Speaker 1: the way, he was really pretty into. He had his

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Speaker 1: slaves at one point clean out a public bath house

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Speaker 1: for the benefit of the people. He just thought it

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Speaker 1: was too gross. And then in the countryside he sort

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Speaker 1: of stuck to a formula to kind of the in

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Speaker 1: between parts of his travel. After all, and you'd talk

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Speaker 1: about the landscape, how long it took to get somewhere,

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Speaker 1: the direction he was, had it in any high points

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Speaker 1: like saints tombs along the way. But and this is

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Speaker 1: the important part with all the cataloging, usually comes an anecdote,

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Speaker 1: a conversation he has with a local authority or a legend.

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Speaker 1: In many cases, his is the only record of notable

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Speaker 1: people or strange customs in a given area because other

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Speaker 1: people just didn't write it down. And like any good

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Speaker 1: travel writers, some of the neatest examples of anecdotes have

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Speaker 1: to do with one of our favorite things, food writing.

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Speaker 1: So for instance, he broods over whether it's religiously acceptable

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Speaker 1: to eat horse meat with Tatars and um questions that

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Speaker 1: a bit. And another funny example, he assumes that it's

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Speaker 1: probably okay to eat giraffe meat with the people in Sudan.

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Speaker 1: He actually writes, God willing it is permitted, I have

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Speaker 1: not found a discussion of it in the sore this.

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Speaker 1: He also claims to have found practicing cannibals among the Colmics,

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Speaker 1: who are Western Mongols who he says would eat their

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Speaker 1: dead to honor them, and perhaps most memorably, he talks

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Speaker 1: about a Cirkashian village custom of entering a dead body

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Speaker 1: in a wooden box in a hollow tree. So if

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Speaker 1: the bees made honey, that meant that the soul would

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Speaker 1: go to heaven. But unfortunately for Evlah, he experiences this

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Speaker 1: tradition firsthand after he accepts some rather hairy honey from

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Speaker 1: a local and ends up learning that it's honey from

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Speaker 1: a hive that was built on a dead man's crotch.

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Speaker 1: He has an appropriately freaking out kind of reaction to

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Speaker 1: learning this, But Eveleah Chelloby biographer Robert Dankoff also notes

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Speaker 1: that the further out on the frontier Evela gets, the

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Speaker 1: more remarkable his stories. And I mean, I don't know

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Speaker 1: if we should consider the cannibals and the honey ones

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Speaker 1: kind of in that end of the spectrum. But some

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Speaker 1: of the things that sound really shocking are of course true.

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Speaker 1: He talks about female circumcision, for instance, but others are

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Speaker 1: clearly made up. He includes fake trips to Western Europe

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Speaker 1: ones with ridiculously short timelines, especially considering Evlia and what

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Speaker 1: we can already assume about how he preferred to travel,

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Speaker 1: which was leisurely. Um, and then also folk tales that

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Speaker 1: are obviously not true and they're presented as fact. And

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Speaker 1: I think this is interesting though, according to Dankov, wasn't

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Speaker 1: like Evly was trying to pull one over on his readers.

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Speaker 1: He suggests that the readers would have immediately recognized these

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Speaker 1: as fiction, just like modern readers would, and they were

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Speaker 1: really just included to entertain something that doesn't exactly fit.

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Speaker 1: I guess with our notions of travel writing today, you

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Speaker 1: don't want to just make things up. But I like

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Speaker 1: it too. Something about that appeals to me. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: I feel like nowadays people want to know, They really

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Speaker 1: want to know whether this is journalistic, is it true,

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Speaker 1: or is it something that it has to fall in

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Speaker 1: either camp? But the combination of the two does sound

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Speaker 1: sort interesting. So, considering the importance of the Book of

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Speaker 1: Travels as a geographic document, a cultural archive, and just

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Speaker 1: a bounty of really well told stories, you'd figure it

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Speaker 1: would be widely available. But that is not the case.

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Speaker 1: Though every is certainly considered an audience in his writing,

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Speaker 1: likely people who were well off, educated ottomans like himself.

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Speaker 1: That's really not how it went down. After his death,

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Speaker 1: the manuscript stayed in private collections in Cairo until seventy two,

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Speaker 1: when it was given to the Chief Black Unuch, who

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Speaker 1: was one of the highest officials at Ottoman court, and

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Speaker 1: he realized that it was pure gold and ordered up

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Speaker 1: more copies of it right away. Excerts of these copies

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Speaker 1: were eventually printed in Ottoman Turkish now, which is kind

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Speaker 1: of like Middle English for modern Turkish sepparently pretty impossible

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Speaker 1: to read for anybody but scholars exactly, and it was

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Speaker 1: translated into English as well, so the Book of Travels

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Speaker 1: became known for Book one, which surveys is stand But

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Speaker 1: the document as a whole was considered pretty much unimportant,

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Speaker 1: not worth translating the whole thing, So by the late

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Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds it was printed in its entirety, but at

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Speaker 1: that point the Sultan considered some parts too too risky

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Speaker 1: and had large sections censored, and that was really the

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Speaker 1: only thing that people had to work with for about

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Speaker 1: a century. Finally, in the mid nineteen nineties it was

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Speaker 1: transcribed in its entirety into modern Turkish. Still they're only

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Speaker 1: extracts available in English. I mean, when I first learned

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Speaker 1: about this guy. I immediately checked my library expecting to

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Speaker 1: be able to find a copy, and then I learned,

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Speaker 1: like good luck. But another hold up with people, I

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Speaker 1: guess studying the whole manuscript, studying the whole piece of

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Speaker 1: literature is it's really huge. And his biography of Evliah,

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Speaker 1: Robert Dankoff writes that quote the gigantic scope of the

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Speaker 1: work has deterred investigators from analyzing its structure beyond a

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Speaker 1: mere enumeration of its basic contents. Character is Stickally, scholars

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Speaker 1: have approached the say a hootanomy, as though it were

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Speaker 1: a huge mind with numerous unconnected passageways. So what I

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Speaker 1: take away from this is that because it does have

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Speaker 1: so many relevant details to very specific areas of study,

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Speaker 1: like botany or food in um, I don't know, the

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Speaker 1: Ukraine or something like that, people will go in and

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Speaker 1: look for what concerns their own work and not really

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Speaker 1: consider the whole work and the life behind it. But

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Speaker 1: times are changing and Evla is kind of on his

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Speaker 1: way up. He was named a UNESCO Man of the

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Speaker 1: Year in two thousand eleven, and a trail through western

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Speaker 1: Turkey now follows the first stage of his six seventy

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Speaker 1: one pilgrimage, and it's meant to encourage historic and natural preservation,

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Speaker 1: promote sustainable tourism, and also to advanced indigenous horse breeds.

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Speaker 1: Since it's the horse trail, it's called the Evla Chellaby Way.

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Speaker 1: And I think you listen to recording of a talk

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Speaker 1: given by Caroline think about this, right. Yeah. It was

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Speaker 1: a talk given at the Royal Asiatic Society, and she

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Speaker 1: said that when she was scouting out this trail, you know,

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Speaker 1: trying to establish it with a group of other interested people,

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Speaker 1: they found that a lot of the local folks along

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Speaker 1: the way not only still knew who EVERLEA. Chellaby was,

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Speaker 1: but still knew what he had written about their villages,

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Speaker 1: you know, four hundred years earlier. It reminded me, I

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Speaker 1: don't know, maybe the best comparison we could make would

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Speaker 1: be Lewis and Clark or something, knowing about the region

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Speaker 1: they passed through, if you still live in that region.

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Speaker 1: But this is four hundred years ago, which definitely puts

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Speaker 1: a puts a spin on the whole thing. It's pretty amazing.

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Speaker 1: I have one final point to I want to make

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Speaker 1: about travel writing in general. I was trying to think

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Speaker 1: about what makes good travel writing. We've already established that

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Speaker 1: we can't even keep you know, a week of journals

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Speaker 1: when we go on vacations. But I do like reading

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Speaker 1: travel writing, and I think that really strong travel writing

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Speaker 1: usually does have all of those details, but has a

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Speaker 1: strong enough presence behind it that somehow it all feels

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Speaker 1: unified without feeling like, oh, I'm just reading about what

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Speaker 1: this person is thinking and going through. What appeals to

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Speaker 1: you about good travel writing, Well, it makes me kind

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Speaker 1: of think about what we were saying about Evliah. I mean,

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Speaker 1: what really appeals to me is when a person becomes

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Speaker 1: a part of a place. They're not just observing and

401
00:23:19,960 --> 00:23:21,640
Speaker 1: you know, telling you what they're seeing and what they're

402
00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:25,440
Speaker 1: tasting and whatever they're doing. They're talking to people and

403
00:23:26,160 --> 00:23:28,639
Speaker 1: not just talking to people, but maybe becoming friends with

404
00:23:28,720 --> 00:23:31,760
Speaker 1: the people, um, you know, forming relationships with them, and

405
00:23:32,440 --> 00:23:35,239
Speaker 1: really becoming immersed in the culture. Because I think, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, that's what makes a really good trip. That's

407
00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:39,600
Speaker 1: what really makes me want to go on a trip,

408
00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:41,240
Speaker 1: as knowing like, hey, it could become part of this

409
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Speaker 1: place and this is what it's really like. Well, and

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00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:46,080
Speaker 1: that kind of writing is what sets a good travel

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Speaker 1: narrative apart from just a guide book or something where

412
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Speaker 1: it's just telling you what you need to go see,

413
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Speaker 1: there's no personality behind it. And I think one of

414
00:23:55,760 --> 00:23:59,400
Speaker 1: the reasons why Evliah is such a strong travel writer

415
00:23:59,520 --> 00:24:02,320
Speaker 1: and while why he is so appealing after all these years,

416
00:24:02,480 --> 00:24:05,000
Speaker 1: is that even though he was very, you know, an

417
00:24:05,040 --> 00:24:07,840
Speaker 1: elite man. He was well off, well educated, he was

418
00:24:08,480 --> 00:24:12,920
Speaker 1: uh devoted to his empire, but he stayed pretty open

419
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Speaker 1: minded during his travels. I mean, he would include stereotypes,

420
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Speaker 1: but like I said earlier, he was willing to go

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Speaker 1: meet people and talk to people and um talk to

422
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Speaker 1: the average people too, and find out what they were doing.

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Speaker 1: He didn't let it stop him from from really experiencing

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Speaker 1: a place, and he knew how to describe things. He's

425
00:24:32,760 --> 00:24:36,879
Speaker 1: known for comparing things to vegetables, for instance, when everyone

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Speaker 1: can run, but something everyone can relate to exactly, even

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