Kâtip Çelebi - The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks. Chapters I. to IV.

TRANSLATED FROM

THE TURKISH OF HAJI KHALIFEH
BY JAMES MITCHELL.

CHAPTERS I. TO IV.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR THE ORIENTAL TRANSLATION FUND.

BY A. J. VALPY, RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET.

SOLD BY J. MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET; AND MESSRS. PARBURY, ALLEN, AND CO.,
LEADENHALL STREET; MESSRS. THACKER AND CO., CALCUTTA; MESSRS. TREUTTEL
AND WRTZ, PARIS; AND MR. ERNEST FLEISCHER, LEIPSIG.
1831.

TO
THE RIGHT HONORABLE
GEORGE JOHN EARL SPENCER, K.G. F.R.S. M.R.A.S.
&c. &c. &c.
THIS TRANSLATION
OF THE
HISTORY OF THE MARITIME WARS OF THE TURKS
IS, WITH HIS LORDSHIPS PERMISSION,
MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED,
BY
HIS LORDSHIPS GRATEFUL AND OBEDIENT SERVANT,
THE TRANSLATOR.

The work of which the following pages contain a translation was some time since recommended to the notice of the Oriental Translation Committee, by the venerable nobleman to whom this performance is inscribed, as being calculated to throw considerable light on the naval history of the Turkish nation.

It is entitled A gift to the Great concerning Naval Expeditions. The author, Haji Khalifeh, is known to all Oriental scholars as a deliberate and impartial historian, and a man of extensive learning. In the present work, however, he has confined himself to a simple narration of events as they occurred, leaving to his readers the task of philosophising on their influence on the political affairs of the empire in general. Of his youthful days nothing is known, except that he was the son of a Sipahi, and that at an early age he was taught to read and write. In his twenty-fifth year he entered as student into the office of the chief historiographer; and while in this capacity, was present in the Persian campaigns of Hamadan and Baghdad. On his return to Constantinople, he attended the lectures of Kazi-Zadeh. Whilst the army was wintering at Aleppo he made the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, whence his title of Haji, or Pilgrim. He was also at the siege of Erivan. He now commenced the greater holy warfare,that against ignorance, by indefatigable study. He attended the principal professors of the capital, and after ten years application to the study of languages, the law, logic, and rhetoric, and the interpretation of the Koran and the traditions, he applied himself to the mathematics and geography, to which latter science the Cretan war particularly attracted his attention. At length, beginning to suffer from ill health, he devoted himself to the study of medicine and the mysteries of religion. So ardent was he in the pursuit of knowledge, that he frequently sat up whole nights reading some favourite author; and when he first commenced his literary labours, he expended the whole of his little patrimony in the purchase of books; but some time afterwards a rich relation died, leaving him a legacy, which enabled him to enjoy more of the comforts of life, and to make some additions to his library.

The fruits of his thirty years study are the following excellent works:a translation of the Minor Atlas, under the title of Rays of Light, which he translated from the Latin by the assistance of Shaikh Mohammed, a renegade Frenchman; The View of the World, which contains the geography of Asia; and a Description of European Turkey. These are the three best geographical productions of the Ottomans. They were succeeded by five historical works: two bearing the title Fezlik; the one in Arabic being an universal history from the creation of the world, till within three years of his death; the other, a similar history, in Turkish, from the year 1000 of the Hejirah (about which time he must have been born), also continued till three years before his death, being a period of sixty-five years; the History of the Maritime Wars; a History of Constantinople; and the well-known Chronological Tables. Then, his great Bibliographical and Encyclopdical Dictionary, which forms the groundwork of DHerbelots Bibliotheque Orientale. Besides these, he wrote several smaller treatises, one of which, his last work, he entitled True Scales for the Detection of Truth. This contains some curious essays on smoking, dancing, singing, &c., and concludes with a short account of himself. He died at Constantinople in the month of Zilhijeh, A.H. 1068, (A.D. 1657.)

This work was the second which issued from the imperial printing-office, established at Constantinople in the year 1726, under the superintendence of Syed Effendi and Ibrahim Effendi; the latter a Hungarian, who had embraced the Mohammedan faith, and on whom the more immediate direction of the establishment seems to have devolved. The types, which were cast by him at Constantinople, are very neat, and the execution of the whole, considering that printing in Turkey was then only in its infancy, is highly creditable to the ingenuity of Ibrahim. Unfortunately, however, it abounds in typographical errors, which have frequently occasioned the translator considerable difficulty. In addition to a list of upwards of two hundred errata appended to the work, he has detected as many more, which were not corrected in a second impression which was subsequently printed.

The volume is a small folio, consisting of 149 pages, exclusive of the table of contents, the list of errata, and the printers dedication, and is accompanied by five neatly executed plates, the first of which represents the two terrestrial hemispheres; the second, the Mediterranean and Black Seas; the third, the islands subject to the Ottoman empire; the fourth, the Adriatic; and the fifth, two mariners compasses, one having the names of the winds in Turkish, the other both in Turkish and Arabic.

The translator has endeavoured to render his version as literal as possible. In some few instances, however, owing either to the errors of the press, or to the use of obsolete nautical terms, of which the most diligent inquiries made during a residence of some months in the capital of Turkey, failed to obtain him the explication, he may not have hit upon the precise signification: but these are few in number, and of such a nature as not to affect the general sense of the narrative.

He takes this opportunity of acknowledging his obligations to Omer Effendi, an officer of the pasha of Egypt, now in London, for the valuable assistance he has rendered him during the progress of the work.

London,
August 12th, 1831.