An Ottoman Cosmography Translation of Cihānnümā (Handbook of Oriental Studies; Handbuch der Orientalistik, 142) 9004441328, 9789004441323

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An Ottoman Cosmography

Handbook of Oriental Studies Handbuch der Orientalistik section one

The Near and Middle East

Edited by Maribel Fierro (Madrid) M. Şukru Hanioğlu (Princeton) Renata Holod (University of Pennsylvania) Florian Schwarz (Vienna)

volume 142

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ho1

An Ottoman Cosmography Translation of Cihānnümā By

Kātib Çelebi Edited by

Gottfried Hagen Robert Dankoff Translated by

Ferenc Csirkés John Curry Gary Leiser

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Map of Gilolo, Molucca, Mindanao, R 49a; cf. M 133/134, 135/136 (Appendix, fig. 58–62) (Topkapı Palace Library, Revan 1624, with permission). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kâtip Ç elebi, 1609-1657, author. | Hagen, Gottfried, 1963- editor. | Dankoff, Robert, editor. Title: An Ottoman cosmography : translation of Cihānnü mā / by Kātib Ç elebi ; edited by Gottfried Hagen, Robert Dankoff ; translated by Ferenc Csirkés, John Curry, Gary Leiser. Other titles: Cihānnü mā. English Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2021] | Series: Handbook of oriental studies. Section 1, The Near and Middle East, 0169-9423 ; vol. 142 | Includes index. | Translated from Turkish. Identifiers: lccn 2021023566 (print) | lccn 2021023567 (ebook) | isbn 9789004441323 (hardback) | isbn 9789004441330 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Geography–Early works to 1800. | World maps–Early works to 1800. | Turkey–Geography–Early works to 1800. | Cartography–Early works to 1800. | Spherical astronomy–Early works to 1800. | Cosmography –Early works to 1800. Classification: lcc g114 .k3813 2021 (print) | lcc g114 (ebook) |
 ddc 910–dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023566 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023567

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. issn 0169-9423 isbn 978-90-04-44132-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-44133-0 (e-book) Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Preface vii References and Abbreviations Outline of Cihānnümā x Introduction to Cihānnümā Gottfried Hagen

ix

1

Introduction to the Translation Robert Dankoff

25

Translation of Cihānnümā Part 1, by Kātib Çelebi 35 Ferenc Csirkés, John Curry and Gary Leiser Introduction 39 1 On the Earth 85 2 On the Seas 88 3 On the Major Parts of the Earth 104 4 On the Continent of Europe 105 5 On (the Continent of) Africa 107 6 On the Continent of Asia 110 7 On (the Continent of) America, i.e., the New World 112 8 On 90 Latitude 119 9 On the South Pole 122 10 On the Relation of Countries and Directions, according to the Triplicities of the Constellations and Planets 122 11 On the Inhabitants of the World with Respect to Religions 125 12 Island of Yāpūnīā (Iaponia, Japan) 127 13 Map of (New) Guinea 132 14 Islands of Chīn u Hind (East Indies) 132 15 Islands of Gilolo and Molucca 134 16 Mindanao, etc. 138 17 Sumatra 143 18 Borneo 145 19 Island of Ceylon 147 20 Clime of Chīn u Māchīn (China) 152 21 Clime of Khitāy (Cathay) 161 22 Clime of India 181 23 Clime of Sind 206 24 Country of Makran 209 25 Clime of Zābulistān, Khwāst and Ashnāghar 211 26 Country of Kashmir and Tibet 215 27 Country of Sijistan 220 28 Country of Badakhshān, Ghūr and Ṭukhāristān 223 29 Clime of Kirmān, Hormuz and Lār 227 30 Clime of Fārs 231

vi 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

contents

Country of Khūzistān and Lūristān 246 Clime of Jabal (i.e., Jibāl) or Persian Iraq 251 Clime of Khurāsān and Quhistān 265 Country of Qūmis, Ṭabaristān and Māzandarān Clime of Khwārazm, Daylam and Gīlān 287 Clime of Transoxiana 291 Clime of Turkistan and the Steppe 303 Clime of Azerbaijan 312 Clime of Arrān, Mūqān and Shirwān 320 Country of Dagestan, Georgia, etc. 328 Clime of Arminiyya 334

284

Part 2, by Ebū Bekr b. Behrām ed-Dimaşḳī 343 Gary Leiser 42 Clime of al-Jazīra (Upper Mesopotamia) 350 43 Clime of ʿIrāq al-ʿArab (Lower Mesopotamia) 363 44 Description of the Arabian Peninsula 383 45 Region of Shām (Syria) 430 46 Description of (Province of) Anaṭolı 483

Appendix: Maps and Diagrams About Maps and Diagrams Maps and Diagrams 533 Index of Cihānnümā

644

531

Preface Cihānnümā is the summa of Ottoman geography and one of the axial texts of Islamic intellectual history. Kātib Çelebi (d. 1657), the leading Ottoman intellectual, sought to combine the Islamic geographical tradition with the new European discoveries, atlases and surveys. His own cosmography included a comprehensive description of the regions of the world, extending westward from Japan. He reached as far as the eastern Ottoman provinces before his death. Ebū Bekr b. Behrām ed-Dimaşḳī (d. 1691) continued the project with a survey of the Arab countries and the remaining Ottoman provinces of Anatolia. İbrāhīm Müteferriḳa combined the two texts, with additional notes and maps of his own, in one of the earliest Ottoman printed books, known as Kitāb-ı Cihānnümā (1732). The English translation of Cihānnümā was sponsored by medam (Medeniyet Araştırmaları Merkezi / Civilization Studies Center) of Bahçeşehir University. We are grateful for their funding and support during the initial stages of the project in the years 2009–2011. medam simultaneously sponsored a Turkish translation, which was published in 2010. While we have benefitted from that effort, the translation offered here is based on a more rigorous scholarly approach. While our aim was an accurate translation of the entire book, we have carefully distinguished the parts of the three authors. Based on Kātib Çelebi’s original manuscript, we have made hundreds of corrections, large and small, to Müteferriḳa’s text. To a limited extent, we have also taken into account Kātib Çelebi’s sources (Arabic, Persian and Turkish; Latin and Italian). So, at least for Part 1 by Kātib Çelebi, comprising two-thirds of Müteferriḳa’s text, we offer an “edition in translation.” Kātib Çelebi inserted numerous diagrams and maps into his manuscript; these are included here in the proper

location. Müteferrika adopted many of them into his edition and added others. These are gathered at the end of this book, together with translations and transliterations. Gary Leiser translated Müteferriḳa’s introduction and Kātib Çelebi’s cosmography (M 1–70), also ed-Dimaşḳī’s portion of the text, designated here as Part 2 (M 422–698). Ferenc Csirkés translated chapters 1–2 and 28–41 of Kātib Çelebi’s world survey, designated here as Part 1 (M 70– 96, 252–422). John Curry translated chapters 3–27 (M 96– 252). The labels on the maps and diagrams were translated by Ethan Menchinger. Gottfried Hagen wishes to thank his students A. Barış Ekiz, Mackenzie Vaillancourt, Millie Wright, and Yikuan Chen for work on portions of this project, and his colleague Rudi Paul Lindner for invaluable help with aspects of the translation. The translation was supervised by Robert Dankoff and subjected to a final series of edits by Gottfried Hagen. We thank the following institutions for making their holdings available to us and giving us permission to reproduce them in this volume: Topkapı Palace Library, Istanbul, for the autograph copy of Cihānnümā, Revan K. 1624 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, for the copy of the printed edition, Istanbul 1732, Res/2 A.or. 371 University of Michigan Library, Special Collections, for Cluverius, Introductionis in totam geographiam, tam veteram quam novam libri vi, Z 232 .E5 1641eb University of Michigan, Clements Library, for Gerardus Mercator, Atlas Minor, Atl2 1621 Me Barry Lawrence Ruderman, Antique Maps Inc., La Jolla, CA, for the maps by Giacomo Gastaldi

Map of Gilolo, Molucca, Mindanao, R 49a; cf. M 133/134, 135/136 (Appendix, fig. 58–62) topkapı palace library, revan 1624, with permission

references and abbreviations

References and Abbreviations M R T Atlas Minor Baḥriye Disegno Fabrica Introductio Levāmiʿu n-nūr Lingua Franca Nuzha

Müteferriḳa edition: Kitāb-ı Cihānnümā. Istanbul, 1145/1732 Kātib Çelebi’s autograph ms. of Cihānnümā: Revan 1624, fol. 1–159a (Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Kütüphanesi) Turkish translation of M: Cihânnümâ—Kâtip Çelebi. Istanbul, 2010 Atlas Minor Gerardi Mercatoris, J. Hondio plurimis aeneis auctus et illustratus. Amsterdam, 1633 Kitâb-ı Bahriye Pirî Reis. Istanbul, 1988 Jacobo (Giacomo) Gastaldi, Il disegno della terza parte dell’Asia. Venice, 1580 Giovanni Lorenzo d’Anania, L’universale Fabrica del Mondo, ovvero Cosmographia. Venice, 1582 Philippus Cluverius, Introdvctionis in Vniversam Geographiam, tam veterem quam novam, Libri vi. Accessit P. Bertij Breviarium Orbis Terrarum. Lugd. Bat.: Elzevir, 1641 Kātib Çelebi’s autograph ms. of Levāmiʿu n-nūr fī ẓulmeti Aṭlas Mīnūr: Nuruosmaniye 2998 Henry and Renée Kahane—Andreas Tietze, The Lingua Franca in the Levant. Urbana, Ill., 1958 The Geographical Part of the Nuzhat al-Qulūb composed by Ḥamd-Allāh Mustawfī of Qazwīn in 740 (1340), ed. G. Le Strange. Leiden and London, 1915

ix

Outline of Cihānnümā {Müteferriḳa’s Supplements} [Diagrams and Maps] Part 1, by Kātib Çelebi M R [Armillary sphere, M 0/1] 1 1b Prefatory remarks 4 — {Principles of geographic science} [Geometric figures, M 7/8] 8 1b 1. Sources used for this work; Atlas Minor 11 3a Other sources 14 4b 2. Meaning of “geography” 16 4b 3. Goal and utility of geography 17 5a 4. Earth and heavenly bodies [Diagrams showing earth’s sphericity, M 19/20] 22 6b 5. Celestial spheres and the sublunar world [Cosmological schemes, M 21/22] [Cosmological scheme, R 7a; M 25/26] 24 — {Ancient astronomy, school of Aristotle and Ptolemy} [Star chart—planisphere, M 27/28] [Diagrams for theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy, M 33/34] 34 — {Modern astronomy, school of Pythagoras and Copernicus} 46 — {School of Tycho Brahe} [Diagrams for theories of Copernicus and Brahe, M 47/48] 48 7a 6. Circles and poles 50 8a 7. Division of circles and the earth [Zones, R 8b; M 49/50] 51 8b 8. Circles of latitude and climes [Climes according to the ancients, M 51/52] [Table of climes and latitudes, R 10a; M 51/52] 53 10b 9. Division of earth by longitude and latitude [Circles of distances, R 11a; M 49/50] [Circles of latitude and longitude, R 11b; M 49/50] 56 12a 10. Distances and surveying instruments [Measuring circumference of earth, R 12a; M 57/58] [Table of distances, R 12b; M 57/58] 59 14a 11. The four directions and the winds [Diagrams of winds, R 13a–14a; M 59/60] 62 15a 12. Rules of drawing maps [Compass, M 65/66] 66 15b 13. Difficulty of geography and need for correction 67 16b 14. Table of contents 70 19a Chapter 1: The Earth [Scheme of earth with sun at apogee and perigee, R 19b] [World map, R 21a; M 71/72] 73 21b Chapter 2: The Seas [Map of Mediterranean and Black Seas, M 75/76] [Maps of Adriatic and Aegean Seas, M 77/78] 92 29a Monsoons

outline of cihānnümā

96

31a

96

31a

100

33a

102

34a

104

35a

108 115

36b 40a

119

42a

119

42b

122

44a

124

44b

130

46b

130

47a

132

47b

136

49a

144

51b

146

52b

148

54a

154

56b

165

61a

193

71b

231

85a

235

86b

237

88a

241

90a

248

93a

Chapter 3: Major Parts of the Earth [World map, M 95/96] Chapter 4: Europe [Map of Europe, R 32a; M 99/100] Chapter 5: Africa [Map of Africa, R 34a; M 101/102] Chapter 6: Asia [Map of Asia, R 35a; M 103/104] Chapter 7: America [Map of America, R 37a; M 113/114] Journeys to America by Columbus, etc. Chapter 8: North Pole, Arctic Region [Map of Arctic Region, R 41a; M 119/120] Chapter 9: South Pole, Antarctic Region [Map of Antarctic Region, R 42a; M 119/120] Chapter 10: Relation of Countries and Directions … [Diagram of triplicities, R 42b] Chapter 11: Inhabitants of the World with Respect to Religions [World map: R 44a (sketch)] Chapter 12: Japan [Map of Japan, R 45a; M 125/126] Chapter 13: New Guinea [Map of New Guinea, R 46b; M 129/130] Chapter 14: East Indies [Map of East Indies, R 47b; M 131/132] Chapter 15: Gilolo and Molucca (Indonesia) [Map of Gilolo and Molucca, R 49a; M 133/134] [Map of Molucca, M 135/136] Chapter 16: Mindanao, etc. (Philippines) [Map of Celebes, Java, etc. R 50a; M 135/136] Chapter 17: Sumatra [Map of Sumatra, R 52a; M 143/144] Chapter 18: Borneo [Map of Borneo R 53a; M 145/146] Chapter 19: Ceylon (Sri Lanka) [Map of Ceylon, R 55a] Chapter 20: Chīn u Māchīn (Song, S. China) [Map of South China, R 58a; M 153/154] Chapter 21: Cathay (Khitan State, Liao, N. China) [Map of North China, R 69a; M 165/166] Chapter 22: India [Map of India, R 75a; M 193/194] Chapter 23: Sind [Map of Sind, R 87a] Chapter 24: Makran [Map of Makran, R 88a] Chapter 25: Zābulistān, Khwāst and Ashnāghar [Map of Zābulistān etc. R 89b] Chapter 26: Kashmir and Tibet [Map of Kashmir and Tibet, R 93a] Chapter 27: Sijistān [Map of Sijistān, R 95a]

xi

xii

outline of cihānnümā

252

95a

256

96b

262

99a

282

106a

289

109a

309

116a

338

127b

343

129b

348

132a

366

139a

379

145a

391

150b

401

154b

410 411

156a 156b

Chapter 28: Badakhshān, Ghūr and Ṭukhāristān [Map of Badakhshān etc., R 96b] Chapter 29: Kirmān, Hormuz and Lār [Map of Kirmān etc., R 98a] Chapter 30: Fārs [Map of Fārs and Persian Gulf, R 104a] Chapter 31: Khūzistān and Lūristān [Map of Khūzistān and Lūristān, R 108a] [Map of Iran, M 289–290] Chapter 32. Jabal (Jibāl) or Persian Iraq [Map of Jibāl, R 116a] Chapter 33. Khurāsān and Quhistān [(space for map) R 126a] Chapter 34: Qūmis, Ṭabaristān and Māzandarān [(space for map) R 129a] Chapter 35: Khwārazm, Daylam and Gīlān [(space for map) R 131a] Chapter 36: Transoxiana [(space for map) R 140a] [Map of Transoxiana, M 347/348] Chapter 37: Turkistan and the Steppe [(space for map) R 143a] Chapter 38: Azerbaijan [Map of Azerbaijan, R 146a; M 389/390] Chapter 39: Arrān, Mūqān and Shirwān [(space for map) R 152a] [Sketch map of Caspian: R 154a] Chapter 40: Dagestan, Georgia, etc. [(space for map) R 156a] [Map of Caucasus, M 431/432] Chapter 41: Arminiyya Province of Van [Map of Van province, R 159a]

Part 2, by Ebū Bekr b. Behrām ed-Dimaşḳī M 422 Province of Erzurum 429 Province of Trabzon 432 Chapter 42: al-Jazīra (Upper Mesopotamia) 433 Province of Mosul 433 Province of Mosul 436 Province of Diyarbekir 443 Province of Raqqa (Province of Urfa) 445 Province of Şehr-i Zūl (Shahrazūr) 449 Province of Kurdistan 451 Chapter 43: ʿIrāq al-ʿArab (Lower Mesopotamia) 451 Province of Basra 483 Chapter 44: Arabian Peninsula [Map of Arabian Peninsula, M 483/484] 498 Ḥijāz 523 Coastal Plain (Tihāma) of Ḥijāz

outline of cihānnümā

527 527 532 552 568 571 592 593 595 598 610 611 612 614 615 617 618 619 620 620 620 622 622 623 624 624 625 625 626 630 631 634 636 638 638 639 641 641 643 645 648 651 656 661 661 667 669 671 674

Najd-i Ḥijāz Najd al-ʿĀriḍ (“Middle Najd”) Arabian Peninsula Chapter 45: Syria Jordan Damascus Qinnasrīn Aleppo Antakya Provinces of Marʿash and Adana Province of İçel Sanjak of Alanya Cyprus Province of Ḳaraman Konya Sanjak of Nigde Sanjak of Beyşehri Sanjak of Aḳşehir Sanjak of Aḳsaray Sanjak of Kayseri Sanjak of Ḳırşehri Province of Sivas (Province of Rūm) Sivas Sanjak of Canik Sanjak of Arapgir Sanjak of Divrigi Sanjak of Çorum Sanjak of Amasya Sanjak of Bozoḳ [Map of İçel, Karaman, Anaṭolı and Sivas, M 629/630] Chapter 46: Province of Anaṭolı Sanjak of Germiyan Sanjak of Ṣaruḫan Sanjak of Aydın Sanjak of Menteşe Sanjak of Teke Sanjak of Ḥamīd Sanjak of Ḳaraḥiṣār-ı Ṣāḥib Sanjak of Sulṭānöñ i Sanjak of Ankara Sanjak of Çankırı Sanjak of Ḳasṭamonı Sanjak of Bolu Sanjak of Ḫüdāvendigār Sanjak of Ḳaresi Sanjak of Ḳocaeli Sanjak of Biga Sanjak of Ṣıġla [Map of the Bosphorus, M 671/672] Routes, Stages, and Distances of Anaṭolı and Ḳaraman Kings and rulers who have conquered the province of Anaṭolı

xiii

Introduction to Cihānnümā Gottfried Hagen

This book contains the first full translation of the world description by the Ottoman polymath Kātib Çelebi (1609– 1657)1 into a western language. Its title, Cihānnümā, meaning “Showing the World,” refers to the legendary mirror which Alexander the Great—İskender in Islamic lore— had installed on top of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, enabling him to see everything in the world, so that he could defend his realm against his enemies and govern it justly. Iranian lore also tells us about the cup of King Jamshīd which had the same power and was known as Jām-i Gītī-nümā, meaning “World-showing Cup.”2 Since its first circulation in manuscript in the 17th century, Kātib Çelebi’s Cihānnümā promised its readers comprehensive, practical, valid information about the entire world. To the modern historically-minded reader it presents insights into the way the world was understood in Islamic cultures. It is situated at a turning point, being both a summa of the Islamic geographical tradition and the first Muslim adaptation of the early modern atlas as the scientific representation of the world. In this essay I will first examine the intellectual, political and social context of the work, then discuss its complicated textual history and the editorial decisions that guided the present translation.

1

World, Empire, Geography

1.1 Beginnings of the Islamic Geographical Tradition All civilizations form their own image of the world, based on their available knowledge and in accordance with their cultural traditions. The first global Islamic Empire, the Abbasid caliphate, was no different. While the Qur’an provides only rudimentary hints at an underlying cosmology, speaking of seven earths and seven heavens above them (for instance, Q 65:12), or a heaven like a canopy above a (flat?) earth (Q 21:32), it was under the Abbasids in the eighth and ninth centuries that Indian and especially Greek astronomy and mathematics were adopted in Baghdad. The Geography of Ptolemy (c. 90–c. 168) was translated into Arabic as Ṣūrat al-arḍ (“Picture of the World”). Its idea of a spherical earth, on which the location of cities could be defined by measuring latitude (from the equator) and longitude (from the far western boundary of the 1 All dates in this chapter refer to the common era. 2 Berlekamp 2011, 91–92.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004441330_002

inhabited world), remains the basis of mathematical geography to this day. The division of the world into seven parallel “climes” or zones of equal latitude, and the drawing of maps using a grid of coordinates, proved to be a legacy that was continued for almost a millennium in the Muslim world.3 An authoritative mapping of the world based on Ptolemaic parameters, commissioned by the caliph alMaʾmūn (r. 813–833), appears to have been lost.4 In a continuation of the same tradition, in the mid-12th century al-Idrīsī set out to compile all available locational data, using a map as an instrument of control. The silver planisphere on which his findings were engraved, on the order of his patron Roger ii of Sicily, is also lost, but his text and the seventy partial maps, at which he arrived by dividing the seven latitudinal climes of the Ptolemaic tradition into portions of equal longitude, have come down to us as one of the most detailed mappings of the medieval world.5 At roughly the same time as the adoption of Ptolemy’s work, another largely unrelated strand of geography emerged out of the administrative needs of the caliphate. Frequently denoted by the generic title of Routes and Realms (al-masālik wa’l-mamālik), this approach is most prominently preserved in the work of Ibn Khurradādhbih (two versions completed in 846 and 885, respectively) and Qudāma b. Jaʿfar (10th century).6 Closely related, but with more literary ambition, are the descriptions of the Islamic world produced by al-Balkhī and his successors, al-Iṣṭakhrī, Ibn Ḥawqal, and al-Muqaddasī, all of which appeared during the 10th century. Uninterested in mathematical geography, these authors divided the world into either 14 or 21 historical or cultural zones which they described, often based on their own personal experience, with much attention to history and ethnographic detail. They also produced their own maps, one for each clime, that often show routes and borders in addition to cities, mountains and seas in highly stylized, geometrical forms.7 Both Ptolemy’s successors and the geographers of the 3 Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edition, art. Djughrāfiyā; art. Kharīṭa. 4 Tibbetts 1992, “The Beginnings of a Cartographic Tradition,” 95f. Given the technicalities of mapmaking in the manuscript age, it seems a stretch to identify this with a map found in a 14th-century work, Ibn Faḍlallāh al-ʿUmarī’s Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik alamṣār, as proposed by Fuat Sezgin. 5 A recent partial translation is that of Bresc and Nef (al-Idrīsī 1999). 6 See on this literature Antrim 2012 and especially Heck 2002. 7 Tibbetts 1992 “The Balkhī School of Geographers.”

2

hagen

Abbasid tradition take the city as the essential unit and show little concern with nature where it does not relate to human geography.8 Nowadays we tend to link geographical literature to accounts of travel and exploration, as furnishing exciting new knowledge; and there is no doubt that information from travelers, sailors, merchants, ambassadors and others was incorporated into the literature discussed above.9 As literary genres by themselves, however, reports of embassies, narratives of travels in exotic places, etc. are surprisingly scarce and remain largely unconnected to the learned traditions.10 The greatest of the medieval Muslim travelers, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 1368/9 or 1377) was barely recognized by the geographers, who were never able to shed their doubts about the veracity of his account.11 1.2 Compilations, Cosmographies, Encyclopedias The Ptolemaic and the Atlas of Islam traditions, which I have described above as two discrete strands, did not remain separate for long. Geographical knowledge turned out to be of interest to nearly everyone. Travelers and merchants wanted to know about routes and goods, administrators about taxes, military men about terrain, mathematician-astronomers about coordinates of cities, historians and philologists about the location of places and the orthography of toponyms. In short, geography became part of a canon of knowledge, a staple of general erudition (adab) required for the elite of the Abbasid caliphate and subsequent states. While geographical knowledge grew at a modest pace, enriched by travelers, traders, diplomats and literati, geographical literature grew much faster through ever new compendia. As we shall see, Cihānnümā can be considered the culmination of this tradition of compendia, while using many of its predecessors as sources. The process of compilation was facilitated by the additive character of geographical knowledge, which allows discrete descriptions and anecdotes relating to different places to be juxtaposed at will. Moreover, much of this knowledge consists of lists, such as itineraries and catalogues of places, events, products, customs and other local features. It was easy for copyists and later readers and authors to add to such lists or to abridge them, since 8 9

10 11

Miquel 1973. A famous example is Sallām al-Tarjumān, who was sent by the caliph al-Wāthiq (r. 842–847) to the apocalyptic peoples of Gog and Magog and narrated his experience to the geographer Ibn Khurradādhbih, after whom many others repeated the tale (Krachkovskii 1957, 138–141). Bonner and Hagen 2010. Euben 2006, 46–89.

there was no narrative or analytical discourse, such as a travel account, that held them together. Dictionary of Countries (Muʿjam al-buldān), by the learned former slave Yāqūt al-Rūmī (d. 1229), was an early masterpiece of geographical compilation. In the introduction, Yāqūt meticulously juxtaposed the various descriptions of the cosmos and its divisions, assembling the knowledge of the time in an alphabetical sequence of articles on cities that are unsurpassed in their wealth of geographical, historical, biographical and literary information.12 As the political cohesion of the Islamic empire waned and ultimately vanished with the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258, compilations of world geography became a new means of maintaining a cultural sense of unity. Zakariyā al-Qazwīnī (d. 1283), using much of Yāqūt’s material, created a classic in a new genre: his two-part cosmography presented the wealth and diversity of the world as a testimony to God’s omnipotence for the pious to contemplate.13 In the geographical part, entitled Monuments of Countries and Reports of their Inhabitants (Āthār al-bilād wa-ak̲h̲bār al-ʿibād), the material is arranged according to Ptolemy’s climes, different latitudes being correlated with celestial bodies, thus accounting for differences of climate, temperament and culture. Characteristic for alQazwīnī’s work is the overarching religious-philosophical agenda, starting from an Islamic cosmology based on Hadith. Over many centuries the pious had collected sayings attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad that related to natural phenomena—the movement of the stars, thunder and lightning, ocean tides, etc.—resulting in a strictly religious pattern of world explanation.14 Al-Qazwīnī went about it in a more philosophical way in his work, Marvels of Creation and Wonders of Existing Things (ʿAjāʾib almakhlūqāt wa gharāʾib al-mawjūdāt), explaining the title as follows: “Marvel” refers to the astonishment that befalls man because of his incapacity to understand the cause of something or how it works. For instance, if he sees a beehive and has not seen one before, he is struck with astonishment because he does not know who made it; and if he knew that it is the work of bees, he would be astonished that a weak animal could make such regular hexagons that a skilled engineer is incapable of making with compass and ruler. … If he happens to see a strange animal or rare plant or extraordinary fact, he 12 13 14

Yāqūt, tr. Jwaideh 1959. al-Qazwīnī, Zakariyā b. Muḥammad, ed. Wüstenfeld 1848–1849. See Hees 2002; Berlekamp 2011. See Heinen 1982, Introduction.

3

introduction to cihānnümā

bursts out saying “Praise to God!” Throughout his life he sees things about that astonish the minds of the wise and perplex the souls of the intellegent. Thus man is encouraged to study the cosmos and nature in order to recognize God’s omnipotence: He should carefully observe the heavenly bodies, their sublime expanse and solidity, and how they are preserved from change and destruction until the day announced by scripture. In comparison to them, earth and air and seas are like a ring thrown into the desert. God said: “And heaven—We built it with might and extended it wide” (Q 51:47). “Wonder,” on the other hand, refers to something quite different: The word wonder applies to every marvelous thing that occurs rarely and contradicts common customs and familiar observation. This happens either through the effect of strong souls or the powers of celestial or elementary bodies, all this occurring through divine power and will. Wonder, then, applies to miraculous events performed by prophets, saints and soothsayers, as well as inexplicable events in nature. This is the essence of the created world in its entirety: Everything that exists, except the Necessarily Existent [i.e., God], is created and made by Him; and every particular thing, be it substance or accident, whether characteristic or characterized, encompasses marvels and wonders in which God’s wisdom and power and glory and greatness become manifest.15 Because of this universal scope, cosmography could theoretically comprise everything in the world and function as a true encyclopedia. This ultimately theological interest in the observation of the physical world, paired with a keen philosophical mind that distinguished regularities—what we would call the laws of nature—from the utterly miraculous, is displayed by al-Qazwīnī in exemplary form. But this interest was not limited to the genre of cosmography, since every geographical text can be subjected to a theological reading.16

Works on the marvels of creation subsequently became highly popular, in both senses of the word, as widely disseminated, and as appealing to non-academic interests. Later compilations, like the one usually attributed to Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar ibn al-Wardī (d. 1419), revel in sensationalism by including detailed descriptions of monsters and exotic creatures, purportedly in the service of edification, while lacking al-Qazwīnī’s discerning philosophical gaze. Cosmographies were among the most widely read geographical texts in the Muslim world well into the 18th century, not only in Arabic, but in Persian and Turkish translations as well.17 The Mongol domination of Iran, Iraq, Anatolia and Central Asia created new political realities, and with them, new geographical perspectives as well. Both the Mongol Ilkhans in Iran and their Mamluk rivals in Egypt and Syria cultivated an elite class of administrators for whom the essential knowledge required—ranging from history to diplomatics to law to geography—was collected in massive encyclopedias. Those by Ibn Faḍlallāh al-ʿUmarī (d. 1349) and Shihābaddīn al-Qalqashandī (d. 1418) are among the most famous on the Mamluk side.18 Noteworthy for us, because of its reception by Kātib Çelebi, is Nuzhatu’l-qulūb, the work of the Ilkhanid administrator Ḥamd Allāh Qazwīnī, known as Mustawfī (“Auditorgeneral,” d. after 1339). It includes a detailed and often original description of the world, the sections on Īlkhānid territory reflecting information and practices in which the author was involved.19 Another compiler of geographical knowledge, half a century after Zakariyā al-Qazwīnī, was the prince of Ḥamā in Syria, Abū l-Fidāʾ (d. 1331), who was more interested in continuing the mathematical and descriptive tradition than providing edification or telling stories. His Tables of Countries (Taqwīm al-buldān) make for rather dry reading. The book consists of tables of coordinates of cities, arranged according to 28 regions, with pithy bits of historical information.20 Evidently it met a demand for precise and easily accessible geographical information, since it was copied over and over for centuries. In the late 16th century an Ottoman compiler named Sipāhīzāde (d. 1589) simplified it further by arranging all the articles about cities in one alphabetic sequence. While he added some 17

18 19 15 16

al-Qazwīnī, Zakariyā b. Muḥammad 1848, 5–12; translation by gh. See Hagen forthcoming.

20

The authorship of the Pseudo-Ibn al-Wardī is discussed in Sellheim 1976, 176–186. See also Coşkun 2007; Anonymous, ed. Kut 2012, Introduction. Krachkovskii 1957, 399–430. al-Qazwīnī, Ḥamdallāh Mustawfī, ed. Le Strange 1915; Krawulsky 1978. Abū l-Fidāʾ al-Ḥamawī, ed. Reinaud and de Slane, 1840; tr. Reinaud and Guyard, 1848.

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material from other geographical-philological dictionaries as well as cosmographies, he scanted the mathematical aspect and abbreviated the locational information, but made it easy to find what needed to be known about individual cities.21 Throughout there is a pronounced adherence to classical models and sources, however outdated their information may have become over the centuries. At the end of the 16th century another Ottoman scholar undertook a major attempt to combine the essential strains of this tradition. Within the framework of a cosmography that followed in the footsteps of al-Qazwīnī, Meḥmed ʿĀşıḳ (d. after 1598) organized his Views of the World (Menāẓıru l-ʿavālim) according to a combination of Ptolemaic climes and the historical regions laid out by Abū l-Fidāʾ. Information derived from the latter and from Ḥamdallāh Mustawfī and many other classics was supplemented with Meḥmed ʿĀşıḳ’s own impressions during many years of travel. This represented the first acknowledgment, in the context of cosmography, that times had changed and that the geographical classics no longer sufficiently represented the world.22 Despite his desire to revitalize the canon of classical geographical knowledge, Meḥmed ʿĀşıḳ continued to restrict himself to the traditional genres of geography and cosmography. He ignored newer writings rich with geographical information such as the maritime handbook and nautical charts of the famous sea captain Pīrī Reʾīs (d. 1553) that fascinated an Ottoman elite audience of the time.23 Cosmography in particular had little interest in mapping other than highly schematic world maps in the visual tradition of the Balkhī—Iṣṭakhrī—Ibn Ḥawqal tradition.24 Meḥmed ʿĀşıḳ also ignored the few isolated travelogues of exotic countries that had emerged in Ottoman letters, such as the adventures of the admiral and litterateur Seydī ʿAlī Reʾīs on his journey from India back to the Ottoman domains, or ʿAlī Ekber’s early 16th-century account of China. Most starkly, his work never mentions the existence of a new world, even though it was shown on Pīrī Reʾīs’ maps; moreover, the first Muslim book on the Americas, entitled History of the West Indies, or Fresh News (Tārīkh-i Hind-i Gharbī, or Ḥadīs̱-i nev) had been written in Ottoman Turkish around 1580.25 The work in which the boundaries between the genres were finally torn down, leading to a new and unified image of the world presented with the authority of learned

tradition and experiential knowledge, was Cihānnümā. Its introduction includes a bibliography in which the author lists all the classical sources used in his work, including most of those discussed above. The bibliography serves to assert Kātib Çelebi’s authority in a field that had never been taught as a subject of its own in Islamic institutions of higher education (madrasa), and hence could not provide him with an academic pedigree of teachers in the way a legal scholar would demonstrate his competence. Instead he had to list the books he used, or the books quoted in the books he used.26 Kātib Çelebi tended to authenticate contentious information in particular by naming his sources and authorities.27 Thus Cihānnümā not only takes a special place in the sequence of Islamic geographical literature, subsuming a good deal of it and positioning itself as part of a living tradition. But it also transcends the tradition by adding new material and, most importantly, by assigning geographical knowledge a new place in state and society, appropriate for its context in the 17th-century Ottoman Empire, to which we now turn.

21

27

22 23 24 25

Sipāhīzāde wrote the book in Arabic first, then produced a Turkish abridged recension. See Koraev 2015; Hagen 2006. ʿĀşıḳ, Meḥmed 2007. See also Hagen 1998. Soucek 1992; Soucek 1996. Pinto 2011. For a full translation see Goodrich 1990.

1.3 The Ottoman Empire and Its System of Governance The political situation of the Muslim world had changed completely since the Mongols and the Mamluks, who provided the context for much of the compilation and canonization of classical literature. The Mongols had established a suzerainty over much of Asia Minor, with only small portions ruled by the Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade. As Mongol Ilkhanid control of the area decreased, several smaller principalities sprang up, ruled by local dynasties of Turkmen origin. Turkish nomads had migrated to Asia Minor since the eleventh century. Now their descendants—nomadic warriors on horseback wedged between the remnants of the Byzantine Empire and the more stable regions of Mamluk Syria and Ilkhanid Iran—assumed power in the cities of Asia Minor with their Persianate high culture. Many of these local enterprises in this frontier region were ephemeral and hardly left a historical record, while others persisted for generations, rising to regional importance. One of them, favored by luck and geographical position—or, in their own view, by divine blessing—expanded into a world empire: the Ottoman principality and empire-in-the-making.28 26

28

The “genealogical trees” of his references are drawn in Hagen 2003, 530–531. See for example his treatment of the Amū Daryā, which has, confusingly, changed course several times in medieval history (M 347–348, cf. Hagen 2003, 305–306). A readable account of Ottoman history is Finkel 2006. The following account of structures and institutions relies heavily on Imber 2009.

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Its semi-legendary eponym ʿOs̱mān probably had not been much more than the leader of a neo-tribal group of Turkmen raiders in the area of northwestern Asia Minor. It was his son Orkhān (d. 1324?), who first conquered an important city in the area (Bursa), and should be considered the actual founder of the Ottoman enterprise. The pace of the subsequent expansion of the Ottoman domains, at the expense of the little principality’s Christian and Muslim neighbors, still leaves the historian struggling for an explanation. Only two generations after Orkhān, the Ottomans felt powerful enough to challenge the Mamluks and the new Turko-Mongol superpower, Tamerlane’s empire. Their defeat at the hands of the latter in 1402 turned out to be only a temporary setback. Soon afterward the Ottomans again set their sights on the remnants of the Byzantine Empire and finally succeeded in taking the imperial city of Constantinople in 1453. It is from this point onward that we can truly speak of an Ottoman Empire. While at that time its center of gravity, in terms of economic resources and military engagement, lay in southeastern Europe, in the latter half of the 15th century it began shifting to the east, where the Ottomans helped crush the Turkmen empires of the Aqqoyunlu and Qaraqoyunlu in what is today eastern Turkey, Iraq and western Iran. Conquering Syria and Egypt from the Mamluks in 1517, it sought to stabilize its eastern frontier against the emerging power of Safavid Iran. The reign of Sultan Süleymān (r. 1520–1566), known in Europe as ‘The Magnificent,’ has often been described as the Golden Age, in which the Ottomans ruled over territory from Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula to the gates of Vienna, and in which Ottoman culture reached its greatest splendor and refinement. The last section of Cihānnümā gives an account of this Ottoman rise to glory, complete with the signs of divine approval that heralded it.29 The modern secular historian will prefer to attribute the success of the Ottomans in large part to the flexibility and pragmatism with which the ruling dynasty adapted to new situations. Typical of the empires of the time, the Ottoman state essentially functioned as an extended royal household in which administrative and military positions were held by the ruler’s servants. As tax collection and military strength were the two interdependent main concerns of the pre-modern state, the Ottomans gradually replaced the military contingents of vassals and allies with a tightly regulated feudal cavalry along with a standing elite infantry of military slaves recruited from the Chris-

tian subjects of the empire (the devshirme or child levy).30 The upper ranks of the military, who doubled as provincial administrators, were recruited through the same process. The fiscal administration centrally controlled the distribution of fiefs and taxation and kept meticulous records.31 The imperial chancery communicated the imperial claims and policies to subjects and to other dynasties. We will see where our author fits into this system shortly. The second essential base of the Ottoman system of governance was a tightly regulated hierarchy of institutions of religious-legal education (madrasa), the graduates of which were either employed in those same schools or dispatched to serve as judges and jurisconsults throughout the empire. Like service in the imperial household, this career offered opportunity to rise to the highest ranks and govern the entire system. As with the imperial household, the top level of this hierarchy was based in Constantinople. A third pillar of culture and learning among the Ottoman elite was the dervish or Sufi orders, the institutionalized and systematized form of Islamic mysticism that had emerged since the 12th and 13th centuries. While some orders predated the Ottoman state, gradually extending their networks under their rule and patronage, others formed exclusively under Ottoman dominion. Thus three locales were central for the Ottoman elite and many of its members were part of more than one. Just as training in the palace service qualified men for military assignments and governorships, men with madrasa training were able to enter the sultan’s service or the chancery, while members from all groups might meet in the dervish lodges. The culture developed by those elites also provided a model for the many regional, ethnic and religious subcultures of the empire. Here we will focus on the elite, whose discourses shaped the ideas of men like Kātib Çelebi and who were in turn the primary addressees of his works. The ethnic background of the elite was diverse: while the devshirme recruited Christian boys, to be converted to Islam, the madrasa career was the primary venue for free-born Muslims.32 Besides their shared allegiance to the House of ʿOs̱mān, this elite was held together by a shared culture and language. The Ottomans used Turkish 30 31

32 29

Bacqué-Grammont 2009.

It should be noted that military slavery has a long tradition in the Middle East. The use of the term feudalism is disputed; I am using it here to denote a contractual relationship of military service in return for the right to collect taxes and dues from the subjects in a specific area. Different from the European model, the Ottomans did not allow subinfeudation and the amount of taxes to be collected was, at least in theory, strictly regulated. Fleischer 1986 gives an exemplary account of the early career of an Ottoman intellectual in the madrasa.

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as their official language from their beginnings, and by the 16th century, with significant help from the imperial chancery, a new literary idiom had formed that was distinct from the vernacular spoken Turkish. Its structure was still Turkic, but its vocabulary and to some degree syntax incorporated vast amounts of Arabic and Persian which were the older transregional and transnational languages of the Muslim world. This new rich and sophisticated language, combining multiple traditions to form a distinct new whole, is symbolic of the Ottoman capacity for creative syncretism. We observe the same syncretism in classical Ottoman architecture, whose elements can be traced to different origins, yet the masterpieces clearly integrate them into an organic new whole. Or take Ottoman poetry, which is unthinkable without the rich heritage of Persian classical poetry, cultivated in the dervish lodges, yet emerges with its own style and import.33 1.4

Ottoman Geographical Literature and State Patronage The various legitimating strategies of the Ottoman sultans furnish another example of cultural adaptiveness and integrative capacity. Pre-Islamic Turkic traditions saw the entire ruling house as imbued with royal charisma. In its Islamicized form, this charisma was now presented as the zeal of the warrior against the infidels. Ottoman sultans saw themselves as heirs of the Roman-Byzantine emperors while at the same time endorsing legal arguments that they were rightful successors to the Islamic caliphate, which had largely ceased to exist as a political institution in 1258. According to a primarily Persianate tradition of statecraft, Ottoman sultans highlighted the justice of their reign. Some even claimed to be the mahdī, the messianic figure whose appearance ushers in the end of time, thereby aligning themselves with analogous early modern European ideas.34 Ottoman historical consciousness awoke in the contestation of these different claims. A rich historiography flourished since the late 15th century as a primary vehicle to formulate and challenge Ottoman imperial self-image and ideology.35 It has been argued that Ottoman geographical writing, which we outlined above as part of the Islamic geographical tradition, should also be analyzed in the same way, as formulating an imperial ideology. “[T]here was a heightened sensitivity to geographical knowledge, or in other words, scholarly and intellectual engagement in 33 34 35

Kuru 2013. Imber 1987. For the last point see the groundbreaking studies of Cornell Fleischer, starting with Fleischer 1992. Hagen and Menchinger 2014; Fetvacı 2013.

understanding and knowing the world’s geography in the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire. … This new imperial vision underscored the Ottoman desire to become a world empire, and positioned the empire in relation to its rivals in both East and West.”36 Such a function of geography and cartography is amply attested in Renaissance and early modern Europe. The Western age of discoveries is unimaginable without systematic collection and codification of geographical knowledge. Maps showing the newly discovered territories were collected and guarded as state secrets in Spain and Portugal. The measuring and mapping of territories was an essential ingredient in the rise of the nation state.37 In the medieval European context, on the other hand, maps had been put on display in symbolic function, whether in churches and monasteries as visual synopses of salvation history (e.g., the Ebstorf and Hereford maps) or as public show of the extent of the power of kings and princes.38 To what degree, then, might the Ottoman production and use of maps and geographical literature be compared to that of Christian, or more precisely Latin Europe? Neither the state-sponsored practical use of maps and atlases, nor the public display in contexts of religion and government are attested in the Ottoman empire.39 Yet it is indisputable that most geographical literature and many maps were produced in expectation of patronage, either from the sultans or from leading servants of the state. This is true for travelogues to exotic places such as ʿAlī Ekber’s work on China (1520), for the maritime charts and world maps of Pīrī Reʾīs (drawn up between 1513 and 1528), for Sipāhīzāde’s late 16th-century rewritings of Abū l-Fidāʾ’s Tables and for numerous cosmographical works. The vast majority of Ottoman maps known today are in the collection of the imperial palace.40 Rarely do the authors of these works allow us a glimpse at their intentions. ʿAlī Ekber penned his description of China as a memorandum about administration and imperial justice.41 Pīrī Reʾīs wished to demonstrate the usefulness of his nautical skills.42 Meḥmed ʿĀşıḳ wanted to entertain and edify Meḥmed iii whom he had known as a prince and provincial governor.43 Seydī ʿAlī Reʾīs’ narrative of his travels in India after a failed naval expedition and his arduous journey back to the Ottoman lands is first of all a tale of hardship overcome (in Arabic, al-faraj baʿd al-shidda, 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Emiralioğlu 2014, 5. Konvitz 1987. Birkholz 2004; Schulz 1987. On the state gathering information see Agoston 2007. Goodrich 1993; Karamustafa 1992. Emiralioğlu 2012; Hemmat 2014. Hagen forthcoming. Hagen 2003, 109–110.

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denoting a whole genre of anecdotes on this theme) and praise of the Ottoman homeland where he needed to obtain pardon for his military failure.44 Sipāhīzāde’s compilation “in its brilliant mediocrity” betrays a classicist literary and philological interest rather than a geopolitical agenda.45 Yet this is only half the story, since the thoughts of Ottoman intellectuals in reading geographical accounts or viewing maps and cosmographical diagrams remain a matter of conjecture. Geographical information can serve to guide a traveler from A to B, inspire the imagination to mental travel or to dreams of conquest, entertain the reader with colorful tales of the exotic or remind the pious of the omnipotence of the Creator. Did Süleymān i use Pīrī Reʾīs’ maritime atlas of the Mediterranean to plan campaigns against Italy, or did he read it as a reminder of the humility of human existence? Or did the detailed maps just make for the early modern equivalent of a beautiful coffee-table book?46 Murād iii (r. 1576–1595), Süleymān’s reclusive, troubled grandson, Sufi and scholar more than military leader, had more geographical works dedicated to himself than any other sultan. Yet when he read the Turkish translation of ʿAlī Ekber’s Book of China (Khiṭāynāme), was he interested in Chinese administration or in the reflected shortcomings of his own empire? Did he recognize in the History of the West Indies, presented to him in 1580, a reminder of the geopolitical realities of his day and a call to strategic action, or did he read it as an innovative addendum to al-Qazwīnī and pseudo-Ibn al-Wardī, as another set of mirabilia that attest to the greatness of the Creator?47 Did he read Sipāhīzāde to learn about new horizons or about the correct spelling of toponyms in classical literature?48 Were the pious tales in the more popular cosmographies inspiration of faith or stale repetitions of long-debunked legends? Almost any example of Islamic geographical literature lends itself to more than one of these readings. It remains significant, however, that the last great oeuvre of Ottoman geography before Kātib Çelebi was Meḥmed ʿĀşıḳ’s great synthesis of classical Islamic cosmography, which, as indicated, ignored more recent genres like maritime charts and travelogues. Its practical value is minimal, but it was certainly considered entertaining and edifying. Yet by that time the shortcomings of the tradition had become apparent, as it had virtually nothing to say about 44 45 46 47 48

Vatin 1995. Koraev 2015. Hagen 1998. For the different interpretations see Tezcan 2012; Casale 2010, 160–163; Hagen 1982; Hagen 1998; Hagen 2003, 99–103. See Casale 2010, 187 and the objections in Soucek 2011; also the comprehensive assessment in Koraev 2015.

vast areas under Ottoman control, prompting Meḥmed ʿĀşıḳ to insert his own experiences. It is against this background—of multiple and ambiguous uses of geographical knowledge, in the form of literature as well as maps, in which the political (where it was present at all) was always intertwined with the pious and the aesthetic—that Cihānnümā stands out as an initially moderate but ultimately radical departure. But in order to understand its true significance, some information about the life of its author is in order.

2

Life and Times of Kātib Çelebi

2.1 Youth: A Military and Bureaucratic Career The real name of our author was Muṣṭafā son of ʿAbdullāh, but he has always been better known under two nicknames that summarize his peculiar position in Istanbul society of his day: Kātib Çelebi and Ḥāccī Ḫalīfa.49 He was born to a member of the Ottoman military class in 1609. His father belonged to one of the privileged cavalry contingents of the standing army (the so-called Six Divisions). At that time, men were no longer recruited to the standing cavalry or the janissary infantry through the devshirme, but came from other, usually Muslim backgrounds.50 The former elite corps of the army was being transformed into a corporative enterprise with little interest in warfare.51 Craftsmen and merchants of the bazaar found it increasingly advantageous to enroll in the janissary corps, which afforded them tax exemption and protection during unruly times. There is evidence that Muṣṭafā’s mother came from a family of merchants, which would fit well with the overall picture of military and commercial connections. Members of the Six Divisions often held positions in the imperial administration; Muṣṭafā’s father, for instance, worked in the fiscal chancery. As was common, the son (apparently, his only child to live to adulthood) was apprenticed in the same office, an indication of a modest middle class status at the time. Long training in a madrasa, that could have led to a scholarly career, was not in the cards for Muṣṭafā. His father did take care, however, to pro49

50 51

He mentions all these names in his autobiography. Three autobiographical passages in various works are the main source for his life; see Sarıcaoğlu 2002. An extensive account of his life is Hagen 2003, 7–78. A summary of his biography is available in Hagen 2007. That a paternal uncle of Kātib Çelebi also served in similar positions would have been a violation of the rules of the devshirme. The phenomenon described here is usually associated with the infantry, the janissary corps, but in the absence of specific studies on the cavalry I don’t see a reason to assume that their situation was substantially different.

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vide him a solid education, with tutors starting at an early age. Studying and then teaching others became his lifelong passion, explained by himself and his contemporaries by his being born under the ascendant of Mercury.52 As a member of the imperial chancery, the young man was also summoned to go on campaign with the imperial army. Since the late 16th century, the Anatolian provinces in particular had experienced dramatic social unrest, the ultimate cause of which is hard to pin down. Monetization of the economy led to both inflation and debasement of the currency. As a consequence, the standing army in particular saw the value of their salaries decline, which reduced their incentives to fight on behalf of the empire. Ottoman governors and provincial notables began hiring their own militias, contributing to the dissemination of cheap firearms, the raising of the tax burden, and the flight of peasants in conjunction with a rise in banditry. Climate change has been identified as a major cause of this Ottoman version of the global crisis of the 17th century.53 Whatever the ultimate cause, all these factors came together to form a volatile mix of social and political tensions which reached a peak when Muṣṭafā was a teenaged apprentice.54 Moreover, in departure from the Ottoman custom of succession, Sultan Aḥmed I was followed by his brother, not one of his sons. This brother, however, was deemed unfit to rule only three months later and was replaced by Aḥmed’s son ʿOs̱mān ii, who was young and idealistic but no match for the entrenched interest groups in the capital. Rumors of radical plans to get rid of the unreliable janissaries incensed the latter and, in 1622, ʿOs̱mān ii was overthrown and executed by rebellious troops, the first Ottoman sultan ever to lose his life in an uprising.55 The campaigns in which Muṣṭafā participated were largely dealing with the aftermath of these traumatic events, against the backdrop of all the structural problems mentioned above. As the janissaries were blamed for the death of ʿOs̱mān ii, a governor in Anatolia in 1624 had used a popular spirit of revenge to rid himself of the local contingent in his province, and thus a means of sultanic control, and the imperial army was sent to bring him back into line. The next campaign sought to recapture Baghdad, whose Ottoman governor had used the opportunity to gain de facto autonomy under Iranian Safavid suzerainty in 1625. It took another campaign in 1628 to get the situation in Anatolia under temporary control, but a second 52 53 54 55

Cihānnümā, first version (Vienna Draft), 4r. White 2011. İnalcık 1980. On the events and their reflection in historiography see Piterberg 2003 and Tezcan 2002.

attack of the imperial army on Baghdad over the course of 1629 and 1630 failed like the first. In 1633 the army again marched toward Baghdad; this time it wintered in Aleppo and, since the season was suitable, Muṣṭafā joined the pilgrimage caravan from Damascus to Mecca. After his return to the army he found that the campaign was being redirected against Safavid Iran, resulting in the conquest of Erivan in 1635, which would be lost again soon afterward. Given the social disruptions, the trauma of regicide, and the obvious weakness of the military in establishing control in the interior and in winning a decisive victory, it is not surprising that the period was widely perceived as a crisis threatening the very existence of the empire. Historians today widely dismiss the characterization of Ottoman history after c. 1580 as one of decline, and in particular the notion that this decline constituted an irreversible process that would progress until the collapse of the empire in the early 20th century. At the time, however, the signs seemed all too obvious. Later in his life, Muṣṭafā would make use of the theories of the great North African historian Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) to suggest that the Ottomans were subject to the same cycle of rise and decline as every other dynasty in history, and that the process of decline that he noticed would be almost impossible to reverse.56 2.2 From Fighting to Learning The political crisis for Muṣṭafā was compounded by a personal one. Muṣṭafā’s father died during the catastrophic retreat from Baghdad in 1626, as did an uncle who also served in the military and chancery. Deprived of the patronage that was indispensable for a steady career in the scribal service, Muṣṭafā had to start over and, despite the help of elite patrons later on, never rose to a significant position in the administration. His two nicknames reflect the incongruence between his moral and intellectual status on the one hand and his middling professional rank in the bureaucracy on the other. His learned friends referred to him as Kātib Çelebi—kātib denoting a scribe and çelebi an educated gentleman who was not a madrasa graduate or one of the ulema. His colleagues in the chancery called him Ḥāccī Ḫalīfa—the clerk (ḫalīfa) who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj). Both names subsequently became popular and eclipsed his given name and patronymic.57 56

57

Thomas 1972 has demonstrated Kātib Çelebi’s use of Ibn Khaldūn as documented in Düstūrü l-ʿamel. See also Hagen and Menchinger 2014. Both names are explained in the autobiographical section in Cihānnümā, first version (Vienna Draft), 4r. Today, the name Kātib Çelebi is typically used in Turkish contexts, while Arab scholars prefer calling him Ḥājjī Khalīfa.

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Besides the loss of his protector and the stalling of his career, Muṣṭafā considered those years on campaign very much a loss. While he drew on his experiences when narrating the campaigns in his chronicle Summary of Histories (Feẕleke-i Tevārīkh), which also shows him as openly siding with the imperial cavalry,58 it is remarkable that his geographical accounts of these areas rely entirely on written sources and never mention his own journeys with the army (they are mostly preserved in manuscript and not part of the text translated here). Thus, while the army resumed its attempts to regain Baghdad under the increasingly assertive Murād iv (1623– 1640), and in fact succeeded in 1639, Muṣṭafā decided not to go on campaign again, preferring, as he put it, the greater jihad of learning and self-improvement over the lesser jihad of armed struggle.59 He was aided, as it seems, by one of the most controversial figures of the first half of the 17th century, Ḳāḍīzāde Meḥmed Efendi (d. 1635). Ḳāḍīzāde, who had himself been affiliated with a dervish order, had made a career as a brilliant populist preacher, having been appointed to the pulpit of one of Istanbul’s most prominent mosques, Hagia Sophia. His main source of inspiration was a widely-read treatise by Birgivī Meḥmed Efendi (d. 1573) which in rigorous and concise form gathered the main tenets of faith, ritual and moral behavior as the basis of a pious life. While Birgivī advocated the classical Sufi practice of “remembrance of God” (dhikr) as a means of self-improvement, he insisted on rigid self-control and discipline, and thus rejected the ecstatic aspect of many Sufi rituals. He also favored an interpretation of the Qur’anic concept of “enjoining right and forbidding wrong” that opened the door to aggressive activism, a kind of puritan movement, nourished by a general sense of moral crisis in society. Ḳāḍīzāde’s campaign since the late 1620s was directed mainly at some of the practices and beliefs of the Sufi orders, in particular the Ḫalvetīs, who also had much support in the Ottoman scholarly and judicial elite.60 Muṣṭafā started to study with Ḳāḍīzāde in 1629, reading Birgivī and especially the great theologian and mystic al-Ghazālī’s (d. 1111) Revival of the Religious Sciences (an apt title as motto of a movement like Ḳāḍīzāde’s), which Muṣṭafā continued to hold in highest esteem.61 His direct interaction with Ḳāḍīzāde was limited 58 59 60

61

Murphey 1993, 293; Piterberg 2003. Mīzānü l-ḥaḳḳ fī ḫtiyāri l-aḥaḳḳ 1306/1888, 133. On this dervish order see Curry 2010. The theological and social conflicts are masterfully described in Kurz 2011. The context of Ḥanafī legal thought is provided by Cook 2000. On Kātib Çelebi’s intervention, which is an essential source for this problem, see below. Kashf al-ẓunūn ʿan asāmī l-kutub wa l-funūn 1941, 23.

to a few months between campaigns, but Ḳāḍīzāde’s influence lasted throughout his life. Not only did Muṣṭafā much later credit him for his own beginnings as a scholar, he also seems to have shared much of Ḳāḍīzāde’s rigid rationalist religiosity. Although he distanced himself from Ḳāḍīzāde’s activism late in his life, his work continued to manifest his distance from Sufism.62 Now in his late twenties, Muṣṭafā had long mastered all that he needed for the job of a scribe. Without hope for a prominent career, he shifted his energies not necessarily to piety (which one cannot verify, despite his interest in Ḳāḍīzāde), but certainly to books and study. Many prominent scholars of the time, in addition to training students in the madrasa, held lessons open to the public in mosques or in their homes. Muṣṭafā turned out to be a voracious student and reader, of Arabic and Persian as well as Turkish, and the list of books and topics he engaged in comes very close to the full madrasa curriculum. Looking back at his formation, he put particular emphasis on mathematics and astronomy, topics that he later complained had been very much neglected in Ottoman institutions.63 Already during his stay in Aleppo, probably the most important city for trading books in the Muslim world, he had rummaged through the stores of the booksellers. Now settled in Istanbul, he established himself as a kind of independent scholar. He was helped by two inheritances, one from his mother (an indication that she must have come from a well-to-do family) and the other from a wealthy merchant who was a relative. Muṣṭafā spent the money on fixing his house and taking a wife, but after achieving that, he spent his wealth first and foremost on books, assembling what may well have been the largest private library in Istanbul at the time. Reading to exhaustion during both daylight hours and by the light of a candle at night was how Muṣṭafā described his lifestyle; indeed, some of his autographs, like that of Cihānnümā itself, at times look like they were written late at nig