Dervish Mehmed Zillî (25 March 1611 – 1682), known as Evliya Çelebi (Ottoman Turkish: اوليا چلبى), was an Ottoman Turkish explorer who travelled through his home country during its cultural zenith as well as neighboring lands. He travelled for over 40 years, recording his commentary in a travelogue called the Seyahatnâme ("Book of Travel"). The name Çelebi is an honorific meaning "gentleman" or "man of God".

Evliya Çelebi was born in Istanbul in 1611 to a wealthy family from Kütahya. Both his parents were attached to the Ottoman court, his father, Dervish Mehmed Zilli, as a jeweller, and his mother as an Abkhazian relation of the Grand Vizier of Mehmed IV Melek Ahmed Pasha. In his book, Evliya Çelebi traces his paternal genealogy back to Ahmad Yasawi, the earliest known Turkic poet and an early Sufi mystic. Evliya Çelebi received a court education from the Imperial ulama (scholars). He may have joined the Gulshani Sufi order, as he shows an intimate knowledge of their khanqah in Cairo, and a graffito exists in which he referred to himself as Evliya-yı Gülşenî ("Evliya of the Gülşenî").^{[citation needed]}

A devout Muslim opposed to fanaticism, Evliya could recite the Quran from memory and joked freely about Islam. Though employed as a clergyman and entertainer at the Imperial Court of Sultan Murad IV, Evliya refused employment that would keep him from travelling. Çelebi had studied vocal and instrumental music as a pupil of a renowned Khalwati dervish by the name of 'Umar Gulshani, and his musical gifts earned him much favor at the Imperial Palace, impressing even the chief musician Amir Guna. He was also trained in the theory of music called ilm al-musiqi.

His journal-writing began in Istanbul, with the taking of notes on buildings, markets, customs and culture, and in 1640 it was augmented with accounts of his travels beyond the confines of the city. The collected notes of his travels form a ten-volume work called the Seyahâtname ("Travelogue"). Departing from the Ottoman literary convention of the time, he wrote in a mixture of vernacular and high Turkish, with the effect that the Seyahatname has remained a popular and accessible reference work about life in the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century, including two chapters on musical instruments.

Evliya Çelebi died in 1684, it is unclear whether he was in Istanbul or Cairo at the time.

Çelebi claimed to have encountered Native Americans as a guest in Rotterdam during his visit of 1663. He wrote: "[they] cursed those priests, saying, 'Our world used to be peaceful, but it has been filled by greedy people, who make war every year and shorten our lives.'"

While visiting Vienna in 1665–66, Çelebi noted some similarities between words in German and Persian, an early observation of the relationship between what would later be known as two Indo-European languages.

Çelebi visited Crete and in book II describes the fall of Chania to the Sultan; in book VIII he recounts the Candia campaign.