A Reading of Kayseri from the Eyes of Evliya Çelebi

Abstract

This year, one of the most famous travelers of the World Evliya Çelebi's the 400th birth-year is celebrated (25 March 1611 - 1684/5). In this context, 2011 has been declared as the "Evliya Çelebi memorial year" by UNESCO. On the other hand, in 2010, the Council of Europe gaye him a place of 20 people who is the most contributed to the merging of the different cultures in human history. That is because of such a big privilege was brought him is his 10 volume of work named "Seyahatname" or "Book of Travels". In this prestigious book, Ottoman traveler Çelebi handled the places where be traveled, very neatly and in the strict conditions of those days. In the Seyahatname, Evliya Çelebi described in the lights of his observations and in an original research that; the history of many large and small settlements in the OttomanGeography, its directors, architectural features, languages, social relations, people sand events. This article is based on the work of Evliya Çelebi named Seyahatname, is aimed to determinehow his reading and analyzing to the city of Kayseri and with this reading the city how we need to examine to the analyze of this city. That's; in the point of his work, its about the reading of the city of Kayseri in the terms of architecture and urbanism. In this context, the analyzing of the city of Kayseri was made by Evliya Çelebi. As the routes ofKayseri he traveled was marked on the map in two different scales; it was meant to the spatial history of the architecture and the reliability of the spatial data has been tested on charts.