Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. IIEvliya Çelebi
History
Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. II
Evliya Çelebi
Caucasus, South -- Description and travel; Istanbul (Turkey) -- Description and travel; Turkey -- History
to escape in safety. Thus they were all driven out of the town. The
next day a messenger was despatched to Várvár Alí Páshá to acquaint
him with what had happened. The inhabitants finding that our Páshá was
a goodnatured and righteous Vezír gave him the salutary advice not to
march to Constantinople, but always to remain at one or two journeys
distance from Várvár Alí Páshá, and to take his station, until the snow
should melt and the weather clear up, at Tokát or Kázova. The Páshá
approving of their advice, visited the tomb of Sheikh Olván Chelebí,
the son of Ashik Páshá, and proceeded to Tokát. In this plain we
remained ten days, during which the Páshá received letters from Várvár
Alí Páshá, exhorting him to be on his guard, and, as the spring was now
approaching and the weather clearing up, to collect as many troops as
he could for the march to Constantinople. The Páshá made as though he
were going to Angora, and on the eleventh day we arrived in the plain
of Chorúm at the convent of Sídim Sultán, a convent of bareheaded and
barefooted Begtáshí, where the Páshá was lodged and splendidly feasted.
The village of Kara Kechelí of two hundred houses in the territory
of Chorúm is an hour’s distance from the red river. Here the snow
beginning to fall and the wind to blow, the Sárija and Segbán drove the
families out of their houses, threw the cradles with the children in
them on to the snow, dug out the gates and thresholds to bring their
horses into the rooms to the fire, and committed the same excesses,
that they did at Gumish and Dánkaza, and which exceeded even the
tyranny of Yessúf Hejáj. The next day we left Kara Kechelí and instead
of passing over the bridge of Cháshnegír on the red river, proceeded
to the passage of Kara Yechíd; which was indeed a bad measure, because
the passage is a cruel one. It had ceased snowing but was so piercingly
cold that the men and horses trembled like leaves; nevertheless the
orders for the passage were given. It commenced with the tent-camels,
the kitchen, stable and other heavy baggage of the Páshá’s led by
twenty able pilots. Two hundred strings of camels and one hundred of
mules belonging to the Páshá, as well as mine and the Kiaya’s passed
over, and, went with all this heavy luggage to Kúrdseraí, but myself
and the Kiaya remained on this side of the river waiting to see the
passage of the baggage of all the Aghás. In the morning their heavy
things arrived along with the treasure-camels of the Páshá, but at the
moment the pilots had entered the river with them, there arose such a
storm of hail and snow, of thunder and of lightning, that the strings
of mules and camels were broken, numbers of them upset in the middle
of the river, and a great many lost. Great masses of ice, the shape of
mill-wheels, now began to float down the river and blocked the shores
at the bridge of Cháshnegír. In the midst of the confusion which took
place on both shores of the river, the Páshá arrived with his music
sounding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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