Red Sea Trade and Communications as Observed by Evliya Çelebi (1671-72)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6093898 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Suraiya Faroqhi (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1991 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Pages | 87-105 |
| Publication date | 1991-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Perspectives on Turkey (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0896-6346 • E-ISSN: 1305-3299 |
| Publisher | Antiquity Publications (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.15184/s0896634600000352 |
| OpenAlex | W2490269200 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 3 |
Evliya Çelebi is known to historians as an observer of public buildings, such as mosques, medreses and city walls, as a valuable source on languages and dialects and, much too rarely, as an artist of narration. Commerce was not his main area of interest, though when describing Anatolian towns, he paid due attention to covered and open-air markets, to khans and sometimes even to shops. As a member of the Ottoman upper class, he could finance his travels by minor official appointments and did not need to trade—or if he did occasionally engage in buying and selling, he did not discuss these activities in his travel book. But things were somewhat different when at the age of approximately sixty, he undertook the pilgrimage to Mecca. In the caravan from Damascus to Mecca and in the return caravan to Cairo, Evliya did not hold an official position, which means that he had to find his own mounts, equipment and supplies. In the sixteenth century, prominent (vacibûrreayet) personages had sometimes been offered mounts by the Ottoman administration, but by the year 1081/1670-71, when Evliya journeyed to Mecca, grants-in-aid of this kind only covered part of the expenses (Faroqhi, 1990, p. 60). Therefore Evliya acted in the same way as many less prominent pilgrims had done over the centuries, and engaged in trade as a sideline. After the pilgrimage had been completed, he visited Jiddah for the express purpose of buying some bales of coffee, which he proposed to resell in Cairo (Evliya, p. 796
Ancient history · Art · Business · Christian ministry · Literature · Media studies · Minor (academic · Narrative · Pilgrimage · Political science · Position (finance · Sociology · Finance · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,27 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2023 (13) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |