The Prophet and Madina in Evliya Celebi's Seyahatname

The ultimate purpose of evliyâ çelebi in wanting of travel is this: as every sincere muslim's common desire to fullfill hajj pilgrimage as a religious duty. he mentiones his intention at the beginning of his work. we see that this wish was fulfilled in the first days of the month of zi'l-hicce in the year 1082/1672. after seeing his prophet mohammad in his dream, evliyâ çelebi set out for his first journey on caşura in the month of muharrem in 1040 (august 20 in 1630); from that day up to the 1670ies, he got to know a huge area within and outside the ottoman empire. if we drew a line around the territories he travelled to it would extend from tebriz, bagdad, mosul and syria as its eastern border, to egypt, sudan and the hedjas in the south, to balkan, dalmatia, vienna and the island of krim in the west and the caucasian countries in the north east. while doing the most popular sights of istanbul in 1635, evliyâ çelebi wrote down his first observations. he watched closely the way of living, social order and other features in all the places he visited. his descriptions of folk songs, folk dances, common poems, tales and fairy tales, wedding and other celebrations, all kinds of faith, associations, interpersonal relationships, social behaviours, arts, culture, crafts and the way of dressing in the territories through which he wandered offer to today's researchers a clear picture of life at that time in several countries and regions. as a writer evliyâ çelebi preferred using a light and fluent everyday-language for his texts instead of the ottoman verse literature of that time. since researchers recognized evliyâ çelebi's seyâhatname as being on another level than works of historians and as being capable to cast light on the past beyond the official sources, it is regarded as belonging to the most extraordinary sources for ottoman scientific research. it is being supposed that evliyâ çelebi passed away at 73 years of age during a journey to egypt or in istanbul.