Kâtib Çelebî
Kâtib Çelebî, born Muşţafa ibn Abd Allah, was a prominent Ottoman scholar and historian who significantly contributed to geography and literature during the 17th century. Coming from a humble background, he was unable to attend traditional madrasas due to his family's poverty, which ultimately allowed him to cultivate an open-minded approach to Western learning. His career began in the civil service under Sultan Murad IV, where he earned the title of chief scribe and participated in various military campaigns, gaining firsthand knowledge of geography and history.
After resigning from the civil service, Kâtib Çelebî dedicated himself to extensive studies in diverse fields, including languages, law, mathematics, and medicine. His most notable works include "Jihannuma," a groundbreaking geography of the world, and "Kashf al-ẓunūn," an encyclopedic bibliography that preserved Eastern literature and scholarship. He also authored detailed histories, including an account of Ottoman naval campaigns and a universal history that emphasized the importance of understanding European dynamics in the broader context of Ottoman existence.
Kâtib Çelebî's writings reflect his belief in the necessity for the Ottoman Empire to embrace Western knowledge and innovation to remain relevant. He argued that a lack of engagement with European sciences and technology was detrimental to the empire's future. His life and works underscore a vital discourse on the intersection of Eastern and Western thought during a transformative period in history. He passed away on September 24, 1657, leaving a legacy as a pioneering intellectual of his time.
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Subject Terms
Kâtib Çelebî
Turkish scholar
- Born: February 1, 1609
- Birthplace: Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey)
- Died: September 24, 1657
- Place of death: Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now in Istanbul, Turkey)
Kâtib Çelebî, the first Ottoman intellectual to urge the exploration of Western knowledge and technology and its incorporation into Eastern scholarship, was one of the greatest secular scholars of the Ottoman Empire. He wrote books on geography, history, politics, and literature and set the course for future scholars in the empire.
Early Life
Kâtib Çelebî (kah-TEHB-chay-lay-BEE) was born Muşţafa ibnՙabd Allāh to a poor family. His father was either a Janissary or sipahi, a member of the palace’s cavalry unit. Kâtib Çelebî received his early education at his father’s side and went with him on military expeditions to Baghdad and Erzurum. During these childhood travels, he acquired a taste for the military, travel, and geography. Even though he was taught to read and write at an early age, his family was too poor to send him to one of the madrasas, Muslim schools that taught theology, jurisprudence, and rhetoric with a concentration on Muslim sacred studies. This turned out to be a blessing.
As the world moved through the Renaissance, the Islamic fundamentalist movement opposed any form of innovation and rationalism. The madrasas reacted by refusing to teach mathematics, science, or medicine, subjects condemned as Western heresies. Because he was self-taught, and thereby not influenced by the madrasas, Kâtib Çelebî remained open-minded toward Western learning. His scholarship was to urge others to learn from Western thinking and ideas.
After his father died, in 1623, he entered the civil service and became a katib, or scribe. In service to Sultan Murad IV , Kâtib Çelebî rose through the ranks to become a chief scribe, or khalfah. At age twenty-five, he entered the office of the chief historiographer at the palace and attended the Persian campaigns in Hamadān and Baghdad with the Ottoman army. When the army wintered at Aleppo, Kâtib Çelebî took the time off to make a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, which earned him the title Hajji, or pilgrim. After his pilgrimage, he performed one last duty for the chief historiographer and attended the siege of Erivan (Yerevan). Once he returned to Constantinople, in 1645, he resigned from the civil service and began to study in earnest.
Life’s Work
Kâtib Çelebî sought out the principal professors in Constantinople and spent ten years studying languages, law, logic, rhetoric, interpretation of the Qur՚ān, mathematics, and geography. After suffering ill health, he embarked on a study of medicine, and then added foreign religions to his studies as well.
Near the beginning of his studies, Kâtib Çelebî took what little money his father had left him and purchased a variety of books. He had always loved books and had read every manuscript he could find during his travels. Later, a well-to-do relative died, leaving Kâtib Çelebî quite well off financially, providing for his daily living. He was able to add to his personal library and often sat up all night reading. His study and devotion to learning eventually made him the most learned individual of his time. As a natural outgrowth of his studies, Kâtib Çelebî began to publish his writings.
Kâtib Çelebî wrote the first major Ottoman work on geography, the Jihannuma (world mirror, or, view of the world) in 1648. In the preface, he discusses his inability to find works in Turkish, Persian, or Arabic that describe the British Isles or Iceland accurately. He used connections, without much success, to try to find information available in Western works. Just as he was about to give up, he found a copy of the Theatrum orbis terrarum (1570; Atlas Minor) by Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598). Also, he met a French priest who had converted to Islam. The French convert helped him translate the Atlas Minor, and Kâtib Çelebî used the information in his Jihannuma.
In addition to the Jihannuma, Kâtib Çelebî wrote, by 1655, a geography of Asia that was the most widely read geography in the Ottoman Empire, and a description of European Turkey. Also, he translated Ortelius’s Atlas Minor, the first translation of a European geography book into Turkish. These geographies, considered the best geographical works from the Ottoman era, helped significantly in changing Ottoman ideas on the science of geography. They were also some of the first books printed on the first Turkish printing press in 1729.
After his first foray into geography, Kâtib Çelebî indulged his love of books in his greatest work, the bibliographic and encyclopedic dictionary Kashf al-ẓunūnՙan asāmī al-kutub wa al-funūn (1652?; the removal of doubt from the names of books and the sciences). This work, which captured the best of Eastern literature and ideas and preserved their record for future generations, was a massive bibliography of thousands of works in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. The work included biographies of each listed author.
In addition to Kashf al-ẓunūnՙan asāmī al-kutub wa al-funūn and his geographies, Kâtib Çelebî wrote five major histories: a universal history, in Arabic, from “creation” to 1655 (1656?); a detailed account, in Turkish, of Ottoman history from 1591 to 1655 (1656?); Tuhfat al-Kibar fi Asfar il-Bihar (1651; English translations of chapters 1-4 in The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks, 1831), a history of the Ottoman fleet and the main Ottoman naval campaigns through 1651, plus biographies of the Ottoman naval heroes; a history of Constantinople; and a chronology (1650?) of the principal historic events and dynasties of countries around the world, from “creation” to 1648. Kâtib Çelebî deliberately included information about Europe’s role in Ottoman history in these works to educate the Islamic world by providing accurate information about the Europeans, who were conquering the seas, taking over Muslim areas, and introducing Christianity to the world. He addressed these same issues in an outline of European systems of government (1648?); in a guide on Greek, Roman, and Christian history (1655?); and in his many short treatises.
In Dustūr al-amal li islah al-khalal (1653; instructions for the reform of abuses), a book on the causes and remedies of Ottoman imperial debt, and in his final work, Mizan al-ḥaqq fi lkhtijārī al-ahaqq (1657?; The Balance of Truth , 1957), which contains a short autobiography, Kâtib Çelebî discusses the reasons for the decline of the Ottoman Empire and criticizes the madrasas for ignoring European sciences, mathematics, history, logic, medicine, and other scholarship. He urged the Ottomans to learn and teach the Western disciplines or face the fact that these subjects would be mastered by the intellect and technology of the West. After publishing his final plea in The Balance of Truth, he died on September 24, 1657.
Significance
Kâtib Çelebî spent thirty years studying and writing, and he was known as a deliberate and impartial historian with a versatile and unconventional mind. In Tuhfat al-Kibar fi Asfar il-Bihar, Kâtib Çelebî plainly stated that the Ottomans needed to study and master geography, both their own and that of the nations with whom they were at war, to avoid the many battlefield errors made by the Ottomans during the shifting of troops, ships, and supplies.
In his history books and books on politics, Kâtib Çelebî bravely complained that the educational focus of the madrasas on law and theology engendered an intense prejudice against the secular courses of learning. Again and again, he pleaded with his fellow Muslims to recognize and incorporate Western intellectual, scientific, and technological advances. He argued that the Europeans knew much more about the Ottomans and Islam than did the Ottomans about the Europeans.
Kâtib Çelebî also made great efforts to obtain accurate information on Western scholarship from what sources were available to him. His sources were not always good, and he knew it, so he condemned them as such in his manuscripts.
Bibliography
Goffman, Daniel. The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. A reconsideration of the Ottoman Empire, arguing that it should be understood as part of Renaissance Europe, rather than as a “world apart,” isolated and exotic. Includes illustrations and maps.
Greene, Molly. A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. Examines the interrelationship between the Muslims and Christians of the Mediterranean region.
Haji Khalifeh [Kâtib Çelebî]. The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks. Translated by James Mitchell. New York: Johnson Reprints, 1968. Reprint of the 1831 translation of Tuhfat al-Kibar fi Asfar al-Bihar. Mitchell’s preface contains a short but very informative biography of Kâtib Çelebî.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Imber includes extensive information about the life and works of Kâtib Çelebî as part of his overall treatment of the Ottoman Empire.
Lewis, Bernard. The Muslim Discovery of Europe. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Lewis examines Kâtib Çelebî’s works, including those based on European scholarship and those about the West itself.
Turnbull, Stephen. The Ottoman Empire, 1326-1699. New York: Routledge, 2004. This history of Ottoman rule, imperial expansion, and military tactics focuses especially on battles against European powers and on control of the Balkans. Includes illustrations, maps, index.
Wheatcroft, Andrew. Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam. New York: Random House, 2004. Examines the continuing religious conflicts between the Christian West and the Islamic Middle East.