Evliya Çelebi

Joseph von Hammer

This two-volume English translation of part of a longer travel narrative by the Ottoman aristocrat Evliya Çelebi (1611-c.1680) was translated by the Austrian scholar Joseph von Hammer (1774-1856) and published in 1834 by the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, set up to make 'Eastern' texts more widely available in English. Çelebi was highly educated, had served the Ottoman court both as a diplomat and as a soldier, and as he says, had in his travels 'seen the countries of eighteen monarchs and heard 147 different languages'. His lifetime encompassed the highest point of Ottoman expansion into Europe, and his indefatigable curiosity about everything he saw makes this work a fascinating assemblage of topics varying from the fountains of Istanbul to a journey to Georgia. Volume 1 includes a short biography of Çelebi and accounts of the history and architecture of his native city.

Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa in the Seventeenth Century

Although the affairs of kingdoms and of nations, like the revolutions of day and night, are generally repeated in countless and continued successions, we, nevertheless, in our survey of the destinies of the human race, encounter single great and important events, which, fertilizing like springs, or devastating like volcanoes, interrupt the uniform wilderness of history. The more flowery the strand, - the more desolating the lava, - the rarer and more worthy objects do they become to the curiosity of travellers, and the narratives of their guides. The incredible, which has never been witnessed, but is nevertheless true, affords the richest materials for historical composition, providing the sources be authentic and accessible. Of all events, the account of which, since history has been written, has descended to us, one of the most singular and wonderful is the establishment of the dominion of the Assassins - that which, by blind subjection, shook despotism to its foundations; that union of impostors and dupes which, under the mask of a more austere creed and severer morals, undermined all religion and morality; that order of murderers, beneath whose daggers the lords of nations fell; all powerful, because, for the space of three centuries, they were universally dreaded, until the den of ruffians fell with the khaliphate, to whom, as the centre of spiritual and temporal power, it had at the outset sworn destruction, and by whose ruins it was itself overwhelmed. The history of this empire of conspirators is solitary, and without parallel; compared to it, all earlier and later secret combinations and predatory states are crude attempts or unsuccessful imitations.

The History of the Assassins

Joseph von Hammer

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