Caroline Finkel, academic and author of Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923.
Caroline has lived in Istanbul for more than 20 years. She is an organising participant of the Evliya Çelebi'nin Ä°zinde projesi/Evliya Çelebi Ride project. This project celebrates through re-enactment, books and film the life and work of the great Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi on the 400th anniversary of his birth in 2011. It aims to establish sustainable, long-distance cultural trails along the routes followed by Evliya Çelebi in the 17th century.
In autumn 2009 the project team followed Evliya Çelebi's trail through western Anatolia for 6 weeks, covering some 1000 kilometres on horseback. In 2011, they intend to ride again in Evliya Çelebi's hoofprints, from Gaziantep in SE Turkey, to Aleppo in Syria, and then back to Urfa in Turkey. This ride will also be a 'Turkey-Syria Friendship Ride', marking the renewed friendship between these neighbours.
Caroline is an academic consultant to the 'travel' strand of the British Council's Our Shared Europe project that focuses on Evliya Çelebi as an enlightment figure whose curiosity about unfamiliar people and places impelled him to journey all over the Ottoman domains and far beyond.
Caroline has a PhD in Ottoman history from SOAS, University of London. She is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Exeter, and co-director of the historical-archaeology project Archaeological Investigation and Documentary Study of Akkerman (Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyj) Fortress in Ukraine.
In 2005 Caroline published what is now the standard one-volume work in English on the Ottoman Empire—Osman's Dream. The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923 (John Murray; plus various other languages).