Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi'nde korku: Bir on yedinci yüzyıl Osmanlı Seyahatnamesi'nde siyaset ve tarih yazımı

This thesis explores the narratives of fear in the travelogue of the seventeenth century Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi. Evliya Çelebi's uses of the word "fear" (havf) in the Seyahatnâme (the Book of Travels) is examined to understand how this prominent traveler participated in, observed, and commented upon the seventeenth century Ottoman transformations. In this respect, this research focuses on Evliya Çelebi's own fears and the fears of other political actors which he narrated to discuss how different political actors perceived the seventeenth century transformations and what they feared about their world. Evliya Çelebi's own fears are categorized under four titles: the fears of centrifugal subjects, the fears of supernatural beings, the fear of nature, and the fear of God. Then, this study seeks to understand the most fearful figure, a seventeenth century Ottoman pasha, namely İbşir Mustafa Pasha, in Evliya Çelebi's account. Here the aim is to use a first-person narrative, the Seyahatnâme, as a source of history. With this aim, the narratives of fear are compared with contemporary narrative sources like Îsâ-zâde Târîhi, Abdurrahman Abdi Paşa Vekâyi'-Nâmesi, Târih-i Gılmânî, Târih-i Nâ'ima, and Solak-zâde Tarihi. The results of this study are as follows: First, Evliya Çelebi mostly expresses "worldly" fears, such as the fears of robbers and pashas. Therefore specific historical contexts must be considered in studying the subjects of fear, in this case, the seventeenth-century Ottoman state's politics and limits of its hegemony. This thesis has also shown that Evliya Çelebi's choices in his depiction of fear were not shaped solely by his patronage relations and career path. The shifts in Evliya Çelebi's use of the word "fear" in the case of İbşir Mustafa Pasha show that his personal interests and political views also shaped his interpretations of seventeenth-century Ottoman politics. Keywords: Evliya Çelebi, the Seyahatnâme, fear, havf, the history of emotions, first - person narrative, İbşir Mustafa Pasha, the seventeenth century, transformation, state