Evliya-Çelebi-way
The Evliya-Çelebi-Weg follows the traces of the Turkish-Ottoman writer Evliya Çelebi , who crossed the northwest of today's Turkey on his way to Mecca in 1671 as a long-distance hiking trail and cultural route . Evliya Çelebi has traveled to the Ottoman Empire and neighboring regions for over 40 years and has left posterity with a ten-volume work on his adventures abroad, the Seyahatnâme (travel book).
Route
The Evliya-Çelebi-Weg runs for about 600 km through the north-west of Turkey and is aimed at both hikers, cyclists and horse riders. The start is in the village of Hersek near the town of Altınova on the south coast of the Gulf of İzmit and follows Evliya's pilgrimage via İznik , Yenişehir , İnegöl , Kütahya (the town of his ancestors), Afyonkarahisar , Uşak and Eski Gediz to Simav . The metropolitan area of Istanbul , from where it started in 1671, is avoided due to heavy industrialization and settlement.
The Evliya-Çelebi-Weg was walked for the first time in autumn 2009 as part of a six-week exploratory tour by a group of Turkish and British scientists and authors. In the summer of 2010 the exact course of the hiking and biking route was determined. The inauguration took place in 2011 in the UNESCO declared Evliya Çelebi year in honor of his 400th birthday. A guide to the route has been published in English and Turkish and contains practical advice on using the route, information on architecture and history, as well as Evliya's descriptions of the places in his time.
The cultural routes of Turkey
The Evliya-Çelebi-Weg is one of the recently established cultural routes in Turkey. As the first marked long-distance hiking trail in Turkey, the Lycian Way has developed into one of the most popular cultural and hiking routes in Europe since it was founded in 1999. Since the beginning of the noughties, a large number of other trails have emerged in Turkey that can be explored on foot, by bike or on horseback. The paths known as cultural routes follow old trade routes or are based on the footsteps of famous travelers. So is z. For example, the Sultan's Trail in the Thracian part of Turkey is the first section of a 2,100 km route from Istanbul to Vienna, which traces a 141-day military expedition of Sultan Suleyman in 1529. The Paulusweg , which runs a few kilometers east of Antalya with a total distance of 500 km to Lake Eğirdir and on to ancient Antioch , follows the path of the Apostle Paul . The routes were developed with the aim of making the cultural heritage of Turkey accessible to trekkers and other trail users “in passing”. The Association of Cultural Routes in Turkey, founded in 2012, is a non-profit organization in which the founders of the routes have joined forces with local tour operators, pension operators and other partners. The aim of the association is to develop the paths in terms of sustainable tourism and to preserve the routes for future generations.
literature
- Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Kahraman, Robert Dankoff: Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi , YapıKredi Yayınları, Istanbul, 9th edition (modern Turkish transcription)
- Robert Dankoff: An Ottoman Mentality. The World of Evliya Çelebi , Brill, London, 2004
- Robert Dankoff & Sooyong Kim: An Ottoman Traveler: Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliya Celebi , Eland Books, London, 2010
Web links
- The Evliya-Çelebi-Weg in the long-distance hiking network (published in the association magazine "Ways and Goals", issue 37, April 2012)
- The Evliya-Çelebi-Weg in the Association of Cultural Routes in Turkey (English)
- Time Magazine on the Evliya Çelebi Way (January 23, 2012; English)
- Today's Zaman on the Evliya Çelebi Way (October 26, 2011; English)
- Caroline Finkel on Evliya Çelebi in History Today (History Today Vol. 61, Issue 11, 2011; English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Association of Cultural Routes on the Idea of the Path (English)
- ↑ The website of the Sultan Trail to the idea of the route (English)
- ↑ The Association of Cultural Routes in Turkey on its goals ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)