La ville d’Athènes dans les mémoires de voyage d’Evliyâ Çelebi et de Jacob Spon

Abstract

In the second half of the 17th century, two travellers, one French, Jacob Spon and one Ottoman, Evliyâ Çelebi, are visiting the city of Athens. This article aims at depicting, throughout the study of both travellers’ memoirs, their perception of the city, regarding its history, its urban topography (places mentioned, monuments commented) and its socio-political organisation (institutions, relationships between the different communities, customs and habits). The purpose of such an analysis is to realise how the juxtaposition of these impressions and expressions reveals us a differentiated representation of urban and human otherness. Moreover, these narratives, for lack of official documents, provide us with precious information in order to piece together the city’s urban and social landscape during its ottoman period. Their complementary character, as due to their different cultural backgrounds, each traveller does not necessarily retain or relate the same information upon the city’s sensorial and institutional realities, demonstrates the interest of this comparative approach.

Keywords

• Evliyâ Çelebi (1611-1682)
• Seyahatnâme
• Spon Jacob (1647-1685)
• Ottoman Athens
• representations
• Athens