Yirmisekiz Mehmed Çelebi's Embassy to Paris (1720-1721)

After the Peace of Passarowitz in 1718 the Ottomans wanted to know Europe better. In 1720 Sultan Ahmed III and the grand vizier Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha appointed the treasurer Yirmisekiz Mehmed Çelebi ambassador to France. His nickname "Yirmisekiz" (twenty-eight) came from his service in the 28th company of the Janissaries.

On reaching Toulon the ambassador was kept in quarantine for 40 days for fear of plague, then travelled via Bordeaux to Paris, where in March 1721 the young King Louis XV received him with great ceremony. Çelebi saw the palaces of Versailles and Marly, the Observatory, the Gobelins manufactory and performances at the opera. Parisians in turn followed his Ramadan fast, his dress and his manners with keen curiosity.

Back in Istanbul, Çelebi presented his observations to the sultan as a book, the Sefaretname. It raised Ottoman interest in French garden and palace architecture and influenced the cultural life of the Tulip Era (1718-1730). His son Said Efendi, who had been with the embassy, later helped İbrahim Müteferrika open the first Turkish printing press.