<i>Aromas of knowledge, networks of scent</i>: tracing the olfactory imagination of a 17th-century Ottoman traveler

ABSTRACTStanding in as a monumental work of Ottoman first-person prose that is without precedent, the Seyāḥatnāme ("Book of Travels"), at once a travelogue as well as a literary composition, is an ideal source for conducting a sensate history of Ottoman-Islamic society in the 17th century. Using characteristic flair and imagination, its author Evliyā Çelebi relates a number of fantastical anecdotes where scent plays a key narrative purpose, once in the context of conversing with the sacred dead in a dream, and on three occasions during visits to the caves of various Islamicate religious figures from the past. This paper will analyze these anecdotes to determine the narrative functions of scent in the text and in doing so tease out how olfaction was implicated in the Ottoman religious and social imaginary.KEYWORDS: Early modernOttomanEvliyā ÇelebiSeyahatnameolfactionsmellstravel literaturedreams AcknowledgmentsI would like to express my gratitude to the editors and reviewers at The Senses and Society for their instructive feedback on this article. My gratitude also goes to mentors and colleagues who provided useful feedback on early iterations of this work, namely; Hakan Karateke and the late Frank Lewis at the University of Chicago, as well as to the participants of the Graduate History Symposium: Senses and Spaces, held at the University of Toronto in May 2018.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict was reported by the author.Notes1. My definition of osmologies is based upon that of Constance Classen, David Howes, and Anthony Synnott, i.e. "classificatory systems based on smell, which are used to order the world", and I take as a given the further assertion that they often form part of a larger cosmology, or "body of ideas concerning how the universe is ordered". See; p.95 and p.116–118.2. The ten companions of Muḥammad who had been promised heaven in his lifetime.3. For more on the socio-political import of Baraka in symbiotic political relationships between rulers and ṣūfīs in the Seljuk era see; Chapter 5 "Bargaining with Baraka" in Omid Safi, The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). For more on the role of the body in the transfer of baraka see the introduction to Shahzad Bashir, Sufi Bodies: Religion and Society in Medieval Islam, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), and Michael Muhammad Knight, Muhammad's Body: Baraka Networks and the Prophetic Assemblage, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020).Additional informationNotes on contributorsRao Mohsin Ali NoorRao Mohsin Ali Noor is Assistant Professor of Early Modern Ottoman History at Johns Hopkins University. He can be reached at rnoor3@jh.edu

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