Evliya Celebi’s birth really occurs when he begins to travel and write, spurred on by dreams at pivotal moments in his life.
His ten volumes of writing called Seyahatname - Book of Travels - are still being translated, but they provide a unique insight into 17th century Istanbul and the city’s relationship with the wider world including London, Cairo and Vienna.
Evliya’s style of writing was unusual and did not fit any particular genre and mirrors a man who was a complex mix of pious Muslim, soldier, musician, raconteur, and writer.
The team behind this exhibition is perhaps rightly eclectic:the Khalili Collection, largest private Islamic art collection in the world; Royal Academy of Music; Suki Chan, an award winning film-maker who recently appeared in the BBC’s School of Saatchi; Mercan Dede, an international sufi musician and DJ; and a number of leading historians including Caroline Finkel, author of the authoritative Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire.
Evliya’s accounts vividly show the intricate conversations that occurred between what has been described as the Islamic world and Europe, through the eyes of a Muslim. As Robert Dankoff, author of an Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliya Celebi writes, that to touch the text is to touch the man.
Maslaha is working in partnership with the British Council's Our Shared Europe project to build an online exhibition all about the constant mix of conversations that have occurred between Islamic people, cultures, societies and Europe.
The theme of the exhibition is TRAVEL - both of individuals and also ideas across time and geographical boundaries. In particular, we will focus on a 17th century Turkish traveller, Evliya Celebi, who wrote extensively of his travels to Europe and North African in his book, Seyahatname - Book of Travels.
This exciting exhibition will bring together Evliya's account with European accounts both in his time and two hundred years later using films, music, storytelling, unique archive images and much more.
Just to make things even more interesting, we are building a physical exhibition which we will capture digitally to turn into an online entity.
