Behold: The Horse!

Horseback travel functions as a time machine, the land-based equivalent of shipboard reenactment (for shipboard reenactment see Agnew, 2004, pp. 330-331, 332-334). How many of the specificities of our experience, espe­cially the hospitality we encountered, had to do with traveling by horse, and what did the horses themselves contribute? Purebred Arabians, Arab crosses, Turkic Akhal-Tekes, and indigenous Anatolians of various yerli (local) breeds are all to be found in Turkey today.

Thus began the process of living like a horseman (or -woman) and even, perhaps, tuning in to the thoughts and feelings of a traveling Ottoman like Evliya. The requirements for a campsite were always fresh water, graz­ing, and enough level ground to pitch the tents. Invariably, directions describing the campsite to which we were headed involved the formula: “There is a mountain behind here, and a ςeξme (spring-fed fountain), and kavaklar (poplars), and grass.” The horses declared themselves enthusias­tic companions, meeting each day with heads and tails high, feeling the pull of unknown horizons, cleverly avoiding the burrow holes of the suslik (Spermophilusxanthoprymus, or Anatolian ground squirrel), clustering round the fire in the evenings, delicately eating fruit. We came to under­stand those tales of interspecies metamorphosis we heard occasionally and that are to be found in the Thousand and One Nights: were they secretly human, were we becoming horses, were we not all half-horse/half human? When asked what was most transformative about the experience of the expedition as a project, Mac wrote:

One thing that travelling every day on horseback for forty days and forty nights, sleeping in tents like Evliya, taught us was the perceptual and conceptual shifts that occur when, after about two weeks or so, you have been riding for so many hours every day that you have forgotten what day of the week it is, and your body is not in the least interested.

(Landry and MacLean, 2011, p. 45)

“In contrast to the housed collections of written documents,” reenact­ment scholars argue, “the body as archive preserves a different kind of tacit knowledge that has long been neglected” (Otto, 2020, p. 113). Perhaps all historians of pre-combustion-engine eras should learn to ride a horse. Amanda Card claims that, so far as the body is concerned, “approximating the experience of others has pedagogic utility,” but only when the acqui­sition of skill is limited, resulting in “surprise and failure” rather thanExpedition and Reenactment 211 “naturalization,” so that “skilled embodied action” does not occur in the absence of “authentic historical context” (Card, 2020, pp. 32-33). Because traveling on horseback day after day, for weeks on end, is far from modern practice, it remains defamiliarizing, reminding riders of its “authentic his­torical context” of centuries past.

In conversations with farmers, breeders, horse dealers, farriers, vets, shepherds, phaeton drivers, enthusiasts of rahvan (ridden pacing races), and players of cirit (a mounted javelin-throwing game), the horse was a brilliant mediator, establishing common ground. Cirit was enthusiastically played by Evliya, who reported losing several teeth as a result (Dankoff, 2004, p. 137). The game is a conscious Ottoman revival, whereas rahvan appears to be a 20th-century activity linking those who ride, rather than drive, pacing racers in a geographical arc from Bulgaria to Afghanistan.

Arriving on horseback in a village or town interrupts daily routines and generates excitement, especially among schoolchildren, but it can also trig­ger memories, dreams, and reflections among rural people because horses have been, and in some places continue to be, such an integral part of village life (Figure 10.3). Despite the coming of the tractor, many remain emotion­ally and symbolically invested in horses and equestrian culture. Whether through plowing or driving horse-carts or the geleneksel (traditional) eques­trian sports of rahvan and cirit, horses are still part of the imaginative land­scape. Even in a motorized age, there continues to be a “fellowship of the horse” in which human interactions are mediated by a common interest and investment that enables border-crossings.

Traveling as we did also enabled us to prospect regarding the desirability of a future long-distance tourist route to help sustain fragile ecological and social relationships in the countryside. What did local people think about the possibility of future foreign visitors and urban Turks riding or walk­ing through their lands and villages? Would this offer an attractive form of income diversification for them? Most appeared enthusiastic; we therefore persevered. The Turkish National Commission of UNESCO approved the Evliya ^elebi Way as Turkey’s first long-distance equestrian route, claiming that our ride proved crucial to their successful case for Evliya to be made a UNESCO Man of the Year for 2011. In 2013, the Commission included him in the UNESCO Memory of the World register; a Commission member stated: “When an international team of scholars recognises the importance of an Ottoman in this way, it becomes clear to all” that Evliya “is truly a fig­ure deserving of international status and recognition” (quoted in Kalpakli, 2013). We also collaborated with the London-based NGO Maslaha on the exhibition “Evliya ^elebi: The Book of Travels,” sponsored by the British Council and the Young Foundation, which has reached international audi­ences (Maslaha and British Council and Young Foundation, 2011). A guide­book was published in English and in Turkish (Finkel et al., 2011), inspiring others to follow the Evliya ^elebi Way (Culture Routes Society, 2015),

Figure 10.4 Shows a signpost on the Via Eurasia and Evliya Qelebi Way indicating the route to Sehitler (“Martyrs”) village, 2013.

Source: Photo by permission of Uludag Sozluk (photo in the public domain).

on horseback (Akhal-Teke Horse Center, 2019) or on foot (Rardon, 2013; Shanin, 2016). An official opening ceremony for the Way took place in 2013. The Evliya Qelebi Way is now part of the Via Eurasia: “The route of Empires: Tread in the footsteps of ancient travellers” (Clow, 2020; Via Eurasia, 2020, Figure 10.4).