Çelebi (IPA: /t͡ʃelebi/) was an
Ottoman title of respect, approximately corresponding to "gentleman", "well-mannered" or "courteous".[1]Çelebi also means “man of God”, as a i-suffixed derivative from çalab (IPA /t͡ʃalab/), which means "God" in
old Turkish.[2] German linguist and Turkologist
Marcel Erdal, citing Baron Tiesenhausen, traces çalab back to
Arabic djellaba "importer, trader, merchant" > "high social positions"; jallāb is derived from root j-l-b "to have brought, to import",[3] ultimately from
West Semitic root g-l-b "to catch, to fetch".[4]
Notable people with the title include:
The sons of Ottoman sultan
Bayezid I, who fought one another for the throne in the
Ottoman Interregnum of 1402 to 1413:
Anton Çelebi (1604–1674), Armenian merchant magnate, Ottoman and Tuscan official
Aşık Çelebi (1520–1572), Ottoman poet and biographer
Çelebi, family of descendants of
Rumi (13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic), who established and led the Sufi Mevlevi Order ("the whirling dervishes") for 800 years [5][1]