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Qatar National Library hosted a lecture titled “In the Footsteps of an Ottoman Traveler: Tracing the Journey of Evliya Celebi,” delivered by Turkish author and travel literature specialist Sevim Buzaslan.
Evliya Celebi, the Ottoman traveler, spent 40 years exploring the empire and documented his journeys in a famous travelogue.
During the lecture, a four-meter-long manuscript map depicting the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—attributed to Celebi himself—was presented. The manuscript, preserved in the Library’s Heritage Collection, was recently republished as a folded facsimile in Buzaslan’s latest book.
At more than four meters long, the map of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers and the Gulf is one of the largest and most fascinating 17th-century Ottoman maps. It is believed to be the oldest Ottoman map depicting the Arabian Gulf.
The map is also thought to have been drawn by the explorer Celebi. Which shows what he documented in his travels in the famous memoir Seyahatname, parts of which can also be found in the main collection of Qatar National Library.
The descriptions of the places Celebi visited closely match those featured on the map, suggesting—along with other evidence—that he was most likely the one who created the map.
Qatar National Library refers to this large map as the “Trumbull Map,” after Sir William Trumbull, who died in 1716 and served as England’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire between 1687 and 1691. He was the one who brought the map from the Middle East to the United Kingdom.
As England’s ambassador, Sir Trumbull had a strong interest in trade routes at the time, aiming to help expand commerce with the British Empire.
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