Gates in Late Antiquity
In the Eastern Mediterranean....
Acrocorinth in 1668 - A Turkish Account
For his pages on the history of the fortifications of Acrocorinth in the period between the Turkish conquest in 1458 and the Venetian conquest in 1687, Antoine Bon had available as sources only the published observations of Jacob Spon and George Wheler, from their journey in 1676.
Valuable as they are, these accounts are not systematic, and they present a picture sufficiently disordered that Bon was led to conclude that the descriptions of the two travellers confuse as much as they enlighten. In fact, their remarks are reasonably sound as far as they go, but need comparison with an independent source before they can be thoroughly disentangled.
Such a source exists, not in western European literatures, but in Ottoman Turkish. In the year 1668, a Turkish writer named Evliya Qelebi (Evliy'a Tchelebi) came to Corinth, and his description of the fortifications in the eighth volume of his Seyahat-name, " Travel-book," is by far the best account of Turkish Acrocorinth before theVenetian occupation.
Article and Image Source: www.ascsa.edu.gr
Keywords: Acrocorinth,Fortifications,Greece,Ottoman
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