In 1655 and 1656 Evliya Celebi found himself three different times in the eastern Anatolian town of Bitlis, the center of a quasi-independent Kurdish khanate having a long and tumultuous relationship with the Ottoman state. The account of Evliya's adventures in Bitlis, including a major expedition against the khan mounted by Evliya's patron Melek Ahmed Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Van, forms a coherent narrative which deserves to be studied on its own.
The centerpiece of the book is a critical edition of three long extracts, amounting to forty-three folios of the autograph ms., form volumes IV and V of the "Seyahat- name, along with an annotated English translation on facing pages. The introduction discusses the narratological, historical, and linguistic aspects of the text, and there is a complete index of proper names.