Osmanlılarda Seyahatnȃme Kültürü ve Antalyalı Halil Salim’in Anadolu ve Rumeli’ye Bir Küçük Seyȃhat Yȃhud Her Yerde Terakkȋ İsimli Risalesi Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme
Mustafa Kemal Sincerİnsan yeni yerler görme ve yeni kişiler tanıma arzusunu taşıyan bir varlıktır. Bu yeni yüzler ve mekanlar görme çabasını çoğu birey, fikir dünyasını zenginleştirmenin ve özgün bir şeyler üretme gücünü geliştirmenin anahtarı sayar. Seyahat kavramı bugünkü turizm anlayışından farklı olarak değerlendirilirse, bu seyahatlerde öğrenilenlerin kağıda dökülmesiyle oluşan seyahatnâmeler de insanların, çağın önemli uygarlıklarının önemli şehirlerine yaptıkları gezileri içermelidir. 19. ve 20. yüzyıllarda seyahatnâmelerin sayısında bir artış görülmeye başlamıştır. Ulaşımın yaygınlaşması ve kolaylaşması ile basın yayın faaliyetlerinin gelişmesi bir araya gelince gözlemlenen bu artış, hem tarihçilerin hem de edebiyatçıların bu alanda yoğunlaşmasına neden olmuştur. Özellikle yolculuğun esas alındığı seyahatnâmelerin 19. yüzyılın ortalarıyla birlikte neşredilmeye başladığı anlaşılmaktadır. 19. yüzyıl boyunca yaşanan teknolojik gelişmeler sayesinde Osmanlı topraklarında artan ulaşım ve konaklama imkânları, bazı okuryazar Osmanlıları sık sık seyahatlere çıkmaya ve bu seyahatler esnasında gördüklerini kaleme almaya yöneltmiştir. Bu çalışmada bu durumun örneklerinden biri olan Anadolu ve Rumeli’ye Bir Küçük Seyâhat Yâhud Her Yerde Terakkî başlıklı risale, Osmanlı’da seyahatnâme kavramı ve kısaca bu kavramın geçirdiği evrelerle birlikte değerlendirilmektedir.
Travel Book Culture in The Ottoman Empire and an Evaluation of a Booklet Titled Anadolu ve Rumeli’ye Bir Küçük Seyȃhat Yȃhud Her Yerde Terakkȋ
Mustafa Kemal SincerHuman beings have a desire to see new places and meet new people. Most people consider this desire the key to the enrichment of their intellectual world and the progress of the power of producing genuine experiences. If the idea of travel is evaluated differently from that of tourism in the present day, the travelogues that are produced by writing the experiences of those travels will contain the evaluations of people’s travels to the cities of the significant civilizations of the century. An important increase was seen in the number of travelogues in the 19th and 20th centuries. This increase because of travel becoming widespread and the ease of transportation and progress in publishing activities led historians and the literati to focus on this field, particularly as travelogues started to be published in the mid-19th century. The improved transport and accommodation opportunities, with the help of technological developments in the Ottoman Empire, meant that some literate Ottomans began to travel more and write about their trips. In this paper, one of the examples of this situation, a booklet called Anadolu ve Rumeli’ye Bir Küçük Seyâhat Yâhud Her Yerde Terakkî, will be discussed with the development of travelogues in the Ottoman Empire.
Human beings have a desire to see new places and meet new people. Most people consider this desire the key to the enrichment of their intellectual world and the progress of the power of producing genuine experience. If the idea of travel is evaluated differently from that of tourism in the present day, the travel books that are produced by writing the experiences of those travels will contain the evaluations of people’s travels to the cities of the significant civilizations of the century. An important increase was witnessed in the number of travel books in the 19th and 20th centuries. This increase was because travel was becoming widespread and the ease of transportation and progress in publishing activities forced historians and the literati to focus on this field, particularly the travel books that were starting to be published in the mid-19th century. After the establishment of the Translation Office, many texts began to be translated into Ottoman Turkish. Ahmet Mermi Efendi, one of the translators of the Sultan Abdulhamid II era, translated numerous travel books at the command of the Sultan.
There have been different views on using travel books as historical sources. Travelers recorded the things that were interesting to them. Sometimes they used an exaggerated writing style and sometimes they quoted the opinions of the people who had visited a location previously. Therefore, it could be identified clearly who is talking about their own experiences and who is quoting others’ opinions. If historians could distinguish the true or false information in the travel books, travel books could be used in historical studies as sources. The improved transportation and accommodation opportunities, with the help of technological developments in the Ottoman Empire, meant some literate Ottomans began to travel more and write their evaluations of their trips. In this paper, one of the examples of this situation, a booklet titled Anadolu ve Rumeli’ye Bir Küçük Seyȃhat Yȃhud Her Yerde Terakkȋ, will be discussed with the development of travel books in the Ottoman Empire. The transcription of the text is attached at the end of this paper.
We do not have any information about Antalyalı Halil Salim, the author of the aforementioned work. It does not have classical travel book properties, and it is categorized as a booklet because of the extent of its content. The author mainly uses plain language except in a special part that sings the praises of Sultan Abdulhamid II. Halil Salim talks about the specialties of the places he visited and the events that he lived through during his travels in his travel book, which is 23 pages long. It has to be said that 23 pages are insufficient because he talks about so many places, such as Dedeağaç, İnoz (Enez), İzmir, Aydın, Dinler-Kinler, and Burdur. The reason for this situation is that his stay in some of those places was short. Although Burdur is a place that the author passed through many times compared to other places, he did not describe it in detail. Halil Salim’s work could be classified as travel notes prepared for a newspaper rather than a travel book because it contains superficial information about the historical and geographical properties of the places he visited, yet detailed information about social life. Halil Salim also evaluated progress in urbanization, architecture, transportation, and education in the Ottoman Empire and tried to emphasize that the state was in a progressive mode. This work could be used as a source for determining the sociocultural characteristics of the cities and towns discussed in the text.
