Robert Dankoff has culled passages from Evliya Celebi's Book of Travels that deal directly with the life and times of Celebi's patron, Melek Ahmed Pasha, an outstanding seventeenth-century military and administrative leader.

Celebi's account is sensitive to all the currents of his age and reflects them in his narrative. His wry comments and observations extend from the intimate details of daily life, and the attitudes of the lower classes, to the deeds of the mighty, the ideals of the age, and the fate of the empire. He concentrates on the later phase of Pasha's career, beginning with his...

In his huge travel account, Evliya Celebi provides materials for getting at Ottoman perceptions of the world, not only in areas like geography, topography, administration, urban institutions, and social and economic systems, but also in such domains as religion, folklore, sexual relations, dream interpretation, and conceptions of the self. In six chapters the author examines: Evliya's treatment of Istanbul and Cairo as the two capital cities of the Ottoman world; his geographical horizons and notions of tolerance; his attitudes toward government, justice and specific Ottoman institutions; his...