Earlier this year, I read An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels by Evliya Çelebi, in part following a very exciting and happy trip to Istanbul in December/early January. Evliya Çelebi was a seventeenth-century Ottoman nobleman, muezzin, Qur'an reciter, and possible Sufi initiate who embarked on a life-long endeavor of travel following a dream wherein the prophet Muhammad, the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and the muezzin Bilal vouchsafed him and gave him the mission of travel. It's a really great book, a super fun read that puts into English translation most of the majorly important, interesting, and sometimes shockingly humorous scenes from Evliya Çelebi's travels (it doesn't feature all of his Seyahatname, which has never been fully translated into English). While there are more tidbits which I think are worth sharing, I wanted to highlight a specific episode which was so surprisingly relevant to this blog and to OSR, location-based adventure design... Evliya's description of what amounts to a real dungeon delve from the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire!
I finished the book months ago and have been sitting on a draft of this post for a full month, if that tells you where I've been at any. Procrastination central over here.
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| 1839 painting by Francis Arundale |
Anyway! I'm not going to quote the entire section in full, because its actually quite long. The dungeon in question are the ancient depths of the pyramids of Giza, which have fascinated people with their age, grandeur, and mystery for just about as long as they've existed. If you're curious as to what medieval Muslims before Evliya's time thought about the ancient Egyptian pyramids, check out this very informative video on the topic from the Islamic history channel al Muqaddimah (while you're there, also check out this video on how the Mongol khans became Muslim sultans, which I wrote most of the script for!). Evliya calls the pyramids of Giza "three mountains," lauding them as the man-made versions of Mount Qaf, the mythical cosmological mountain so large it encircles the world, and even gives names to each of these mountains (these are Mt. Balbahith (aka Belhib), Mt. Malhawiya (aka Belhube), and Mt. Abu'l-hawl (which actually refers to the Sphinx)). He also goes over the many conflicting accounts for why the pyramids were created, which (at least in this translation) reads very much like the kind of fantastical yet purposefully uncertain worldbuilding that is widespread in these circles:
There are thousands of stories about these artificial mountains. Some chroniclers say they were built before the Flood by Ad ibn Shaddad. Others maintain that before the flood, King Surid, at the urging of his soothsayers, built them as a tomb for himself. When they were finished he filled the three pyramids with treasure, put in weapons, and also placed therein the books of all the sciences written by the prophet Idris. He set up talismans and guardians (?) and covered the pyramids with brocade, making them a hidden treasure. He also built a great city on the shores of the Nile where the guards of the pyramid resided. Every year, in spring, all the people of the world came and circumambulated the pyramids, as they do the Ka'ba.
Even now, in the northern pyramid, there is a south-facing gate, inside of which, on the right side, is a Hebrew inscription carved on the rocks. It reads, "I who built the pyramids completed them in six years. May those who come after me be able to tear them down from their foundations in 600 years. Indeed, it is easier to tear down than to build up. And I covered them with brocade. May the kings who come after me be able to cover with them reed mats."
Further, Evliya recounts a tale of the Caliph Ma'mun, who came from Baghdad to Giza to uncover the treasures of the pyramids, and whose efforts to do so proved the above inscription, because after spending seven months just to excavate 20 cubits from the pyramid, his workers only uncovered a jar containing enough gold pieces to exactly cover the exorbitant costs of the excavation thus far and nothing else. But, lest he let his own ego be overcome by this, he boasts his plan to overcome the ancient mountains:
As for the saying of Surid - "I built the pyramids in six years. May the kings who come after me be able to tear them down in 600 years" - the interpretation of this humble one is: If I were to mine the pyramids with 100 quintals of black powder and one 'six-treasure' mine that was used in the siege of Candia castle, the mountains of Ahram (the pyramids) would be blown sky-high like an ihram (pilgrim's garment) and no trace would be left of the building, not even the foundation, but all would crumble to the ground and melt into the Nile.
But, to tell the truth, I have never seen such a huge building on the face of the earth...
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| Inside the great pyramid of Khufu |
And now, the dungeon delve proper:
God be praised that, during the governorship of Ibrahim Pasha, I spent five or ten days partying next to the pyramids, while our horses were grazing in the nearby meadow, and I had occasion to tour them several times and marvel at them.
On one occasion there were forty-five of us, including some in the retinue of the Master of the Horse and Behlul Agha and other officers. We brought torches, oilcloth lanterns and wind-tapers. After clearing away the sand and rubbish from the door on the northern side of the large pyramid, we took refuge in God and entered with a besmele. This humble one kept an eye on the compass and the watch.
The first 700 paces in a southern direction was a broad highway, fifteen cubits wide and surmounted by vaults 20 cubits high. There were numerous caves on either side, also man-made halls with domes carved from the soft rock stratum and gilded and decorated as though just emerged from the hand of Bihzad. Every cell was full of human bones, and every skull could hold 100 bushels of wheat. Only God knows how many skulls there were, both large and small. In our path lay a shinbone, still covered with its skin, that was 71 spans as measured by this humble one's hand. There were an abundance of such bones.
One large cave was full of human corpses that lay shrouded in date-palm fibres. And there were several hundred skeletons (or mummies), each 70 or 80 paces tall. But we nearly suffocated from the smell of bat droppings, the bats being as large as crows and hanging from the rocks by their claws. Some hurled themselves at the lanterns and torches and scorched their wings. Some struck us in the face.
At this juncture, a few of our companions got frightened and went back with one or two lanterns. The thirty-five of us who were left summoned our courage and went on for another hour, along a gently descending slope, our compass pointing south. We saw vaulted halls like the Vault of Chosroes, each containing mummified human corpses, and near them, trampled in the dust, rotted reed mats and pieces of cloth woven of date-palm fibre.
Fifty paces further on, continuing on a downward slope, we came upon a large pool of clear water. But all around the edge sat frightful birds, as large as eagles or geese. As soon as they saw us, they flapped their wings and produced a thunderous noise that made our brains ooze from our ears. And the bats besmirched us and our clothes with their droppings. Meanwhile the torchbearers informed us they were running out of kindling. The noise produced by those eagles' wings was particularly dreadful.
We had no heart to advance a single step beyond that pool, and had just decided to turn around when a freezing-cold wind from the direction of the birds made us shudder with apprehension. What would we do if our torches and lanterns went out? The bats meanwhile, that were the size of pigeons, kept fluttering at the flames like moths and brushing against our faces with their wings. It nearly drove us crazy.
To make a long story short, guided by the piles of stones we had set up along the way, we somehow managed to make our way back and emerged safe and sound. Our companions who had fled earlier teased us, saying, "Where did you get these filthy faces and strange looks?" God knows, though we emerged safely, we were completely exhausted. But it was a tremendous experience! Only God knows what lies beyond that pool.
Thus this humble one saw the inside of one of the pyramids. There was no buried treasure, only buried men. But there is no doubt that it is under a talismanic power. For when we came to that pool, all of us were confounded, and we remained in this stunned condition until we came out into the air, when we recovered our souls. God save us! May I never be vouchsafed to enter it again.
After returning to our tents for breakfast and coffee, we surveyed the pyramids from all sides. Two of them have a square base with each side 200 paces long, making the circumference 800 paces. Each of the stones is 20 or 30 cubits. The large pyramid has a door on the northern side through which we entered, but the other two have no visible entrance. The Abu'l-hawl pyramid (the Sphinx) is quite small, but both are mountains with square base and pointed tip reaching up to the sky.
I climbed up the pyramid that we had entered. At the top there isa square or arena large enough to pitch a pup-tent with ten flaps. In some of the crevices I found jesses and hoods and pigeon rings and anklets. All Cairo was spread out beneath my feet - so lofty are these mountains. There are also structures built of black stone and guarded by talismans all around the pyramids. I would need an entire volume to describe them all.
I hope that you may forgive the lengthy quotation! I just loved this whole episode from the moment that I read it. It is so completely unlike what we now know to be inside the pyramids at Giza, to the point that clearly it must be fabricated, but none of the details surrounding the actual expedition into the pyramid appears fantastical or fabricated at all. The talismanic power that surrounds the pyramid fits very well into the aca'ib literature in the Ottoman Empire at the time, the literature of the fantastic and miraculous, more or less the early modern Ottoman equivalent of paranormal literature. But on top of that, the imagery here is just so unsettling! Giant, looming skeletons and desiccated corpses, a pool of dark water thronged by huge uncanny birds (birds explicitly compared with eagles and geese especially, for some reason roosting in this completely closed-in space, just feels so fundamentally wrong). It's just too good!!
Thinking through Evliya's description as an actual dungeon, it reads very much like a classic dungeon where the main concerns are resource depletion brought on by the systemic exploration of large ancient spaces which may have rather monotonous architecture. Not quite a fair comparison, but reminds me some of good ol' megadungeons like what we have of Gary's notes for Castle Greyhawk, or the early OSR favorite Stonehell. None of the giant corpses come to life like something out of Barrowmaze, but they very very effectively set the tone (alongside the giant "vaults of Chosroes" (Khosrau Anushirvan)) for the methodical exploration. This is then capped off with a room that seems to be half "special" (i.e. the mysterious pool with the birds posing a particularly sound-based challenge for Evliya and the other adventurers) and half a monster lair. I love the birds so much dude.
That's all I wanted to make this post for :) It's just a very very cool OSR-y episode from an extensive collection of such evocative anecdotes and descriptions which document a life of travel in the seventeenth century. I would love to run a dungeon with even half the rich oozing darkness of Evliya's description here.
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| Ottoman miniature of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus (they slept in a cave which is underground like the pyramid dungeon is, so its thematically appropriate) |
Joesky tax for this otherwise non-gameable post:
Classic, right up to the torch flames being threatened by a sudden wind and flapping giant bats!
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