Istanbul in Russian Pilgrımages within the scope of Religious Tourism

Travelogues, which consist of the writings of people during their travels, are considered an important source of information today. With the adoption of Orthodox Christianity by the Russians in 988, pilgrimages began to be made to places considered as holy lands. In the words of Russian writer Y. N. Trubetskoy, Istanbul, which has a special importance in the spiritual world of Russians as "the holy city where Hagia Sophia, where the ancestors of Russians were baptized", or "Tsargrad" (City of Tsars) as the Russians call it, has been an important stop of these pilgrimages. The notes kept by Russian travelers who went on pilgrimage from the 11th to the 14th centuries were called hojdeniye (pilgrimage books) in Old Russian literature. Hajnames appear as the only example of the genre of Russian travel notes for three centuries. In this study, it is aimed to contribute to the enrichment of the narratives of tourist guides serving for faith tourism by investigating elements such as holy places, holy relics, architectural features of holy places and legends written about them, social, cultural and political structure of the period in the pilgrimages written by Russian Orthodox pilgrims coming to Istanbul. For this purpose, four pilgrimages written in Russian between 1200-1389 were selected as the main data source.The pilgrimages were translated into Turkish by the researcher. The translated texts were transferred to Maxqda and codes were extracted in the research in which qualitative method was adopted. The data obtained were subjected to inductive thematic analysis. Nine main categories were identified under three themes: "Religious elements", "Historical elements", "Artistic elements". In the tours for tourists coming to Istanbul for religious tourism, it is thought that the information contained in the pilgrimage books will add difference and richness to the narratives of tourist guides.