'Ali Akbar Khata'i

ʿAli Akbar Khata'i (modern Turkish: Ali Ekber Hıtai; fl. ca. 1500–1516) was an early 16th-century Persian traveler and writer. Although there is no certainty about his origin, it is known that by 1515 he came to (or returned to) Istanbul, where he published Ḵaṭāy-nāma, which is considered one of the most complete travel notes about Ming China. His work, originally written in Persian, was later translated into Turkish, and became influential in the Turkish- and Persian-speaking Muslim world.

As with other Middle Eastern personages, there are a great number of ways to transcribe 'Ali Akbar's name. For example, Encyclopædia Iranica uses the spelling ʿAlī Akbar Ḵeṭāʾī.^[1]

Nothing much is known for sure about 'Ali Akbar's origin and early life. While he created his book in Istanbul, he may have been born elsewhere in the Islamic World - perhaps, as Aly Mazahéri suggested, based on textual references, even as far as in Transoxania (Bukhara).^[2][3]

Some researchers think that ʿAlī Akbar's name may indicate his Shi'ite origin. However, his text praises the Four Righteous Caliphs (venerated by the Sunnis), so even if born and raised a Shi'ite, he must have changed his religious affiliation due to the changing political situation.^[2]

ʿAlī Akbar is thought to have been a merchant by some authors.^[4] He refers to himself as a qalandar (dervish) a few times in his book; however, this may be just a figurative expression, emphasizing his humbleness, rather than a literal description of a membership in a dervish order.^[2]

The epithet "Khata'i" in ʿAli Akbar's name means "of China", presumably referring to him having traveled to and lived in China.^[3][5] While it is usually thought that at least some of the material in Khataynameh is based on the author's first hand experiences in China, at least one scholar of Khataynameh - Lin Yih-Min, who translated the book into modern Turkish - believes that ʿAlī Akbar (much like Juan González de Mendoza and perhaps Marco Polo) did not actually travel to China, and his work is thus completely based on others' reports.^[2][3]

ʿAlī Akbar's Khataynameh ("The Book of China"), written in Persian, was completed in 1516 in Istanbul, and was made available in 1520.^[6]

ʿAlī Akbar's work, also known as Kanun-name, was translated into Ottoman Turkish in 1582. His work was used by later Turkish authors; in particular, it was one of the main sources of information on China used by Katip Çelebi in his Jihān-numā, along with an earlier work by a Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh. As modern researchers note, Ghiyāth al-dīn's and 'Ali Akbar's accounts, in a way, complemented each other, as the two authors saw Ming China from different aspects: Ghiyāth al-dīn came to the court of the Ming Yongle Emperor as a member of an official delegation from the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh, and much of his report is focused on court and diplomatic events; on the other hand, 'Ali Akbar, who, as Ildikó Bellér-Hann surmises, may have been a merchant, gives a much better view of the country's everyday life.^[7] Ali Akbar, in his book The Khataynameh, recorded many policies of the Ming court during Hongzhi and Zhengde reigns.^[5][3]

Three chapters of the Khataynameh were translated into French by Charles Schefer and published in 1883, along with the Persian original.^[8]

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• Schefer, Charles (1883), "Trois chapitres du Khitay Namèh. Texte persan et traduction française", Mélanges orientaux: textes et traductions publiés par les professeurs de l'École spéciale des langues orientales vivantes à l'occasion du sixième Congrès international des orientalistes réuni à Leyde, Septembre 1883, Volume 9 of Publications de l'École des langues orientales vivantes, E. Laroux, pp. 29–84
• Bellér-Hann, Ildikó (1995), A History of Cathay: a translation and linguistic analysis of a fifteenth-century Turkic manuscript, Bloomington: Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, ISBN 0-933070-37-3
• Chen, Yuan Julian (2021). Between the Islamic and Chinese Universal Empires: The Ottoman Empire, Ming Dynasty, and Global Age of Explorations, Journal of Early Modern History, 25(5), 422–456. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/15700658-bja10030