Author of Don Quixote: Who is Cervantes?

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the famous writer of Spanish Literature, was born in Alcalá de Henares, Spain in 1547.

When Cervantes was still a child, his family moved to Valladolid in 1551, then again to Alcalá de Henares, and in 1553 to Córdoba, one of the southern cities of Spain, due to the difficulties in his father's career. In 1562 he was sent to a Jesuit school in Seville by his uncle. However, due to the financial difficulties of the family, he could not complete his education here and came to Madrid.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 NS) was an Early Modern Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. 

In 1568, at the age of twenty-one, Cervantes badly injured his opponent in a duel in Madrid over a women's issue. According to the laws of that period, duels were strictly prohibited and heavy penalties were given to those who did it. At the hearing held in the absence of Cervantes, it was decided that his right hand be amputated at the wrist in public and that he would be exiled outside the borders of the Kingdom of Spain for ten years. Upon this situation, Cervantes escaped from Madrid and went to Italy. Later, he joins the Crusader Navy established by Spain, Venice, Genoa, Papacy, and Malta against the Ottoman dominance in the Mediterranean. As a result of the Naval Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Crusader navy wins a victory against the Ottoman Empire, but Cervantes is wounded in the chest and left hand during the war. He is sent to Mesina for treatment, where he stays for six months, but cannot use his left arm again.

Cervantes resumed his military service the following year. He participated in the Corfu, Navarino, Tunis, and Halkavud Campaigns against the Ottomans. Even though four years have passed since the Battle of Lepanto, he was not promoted to the rank he wanted, to the rank of captain, which caused him to leave the military. In September 1575, he sailed from Naples towards Spain in a galley named Sol, which means sun. Ottoman galleys take Cervantes, his brother, and other people in the galley captive and take them to Algeria.

In the documentary Kılıç Ali Pasha Mosque produced in 2015, it is claimed that Cervantes was employed as a bricklayer in the construction of the Kılıç Ali Pasha Mosque. The notebooks in which the names of the workers in the construction of the mosque are written under the command of Mimar Sinan are found in the archives of the Foundations, and the name of Cervantes is also found in this notebook. Cervantes writes a verse letter to King Second Philip for his salvation, is freed from his five-year prisoner life with the ransom money his parents paid for, and returns to Spain on September 19, 1580.

Attempts to find a job fail. Cervantes, who was sent to Oran by King Philip II in 1581, became unemployed again after a while. When his search for a job in the South American colonies failed, he returned to Madrid in 1583 and embarked on what he would do best in his next life: writing. After returning to his country, he wrote about twenty or thirty plays. In 1585 he published his pastoral romance La Galatea. Meanwhile, he marries Catalina de Salazar, the daughter of a wealthy farmer, although he has a daughter with a man named Ana Franca de Rojas.

Apart from literature, he looks for a job that will earn him money and starts a job as a quartermaster in the Navy. Due to some irregularities during his duty, he is imprisoned because he was indirectly found guilty. After getting out of prison, he started a job as a tax collector, but in 1597 he was fired from this civil service for an unknown reason. Some researchers think that Cervantes decided to write Don Quixote in prison.

Katalina Sultan of Oviedo, which is estimated to have been written in the early 1600s, is the author's work that contains the most information about Istanbul and Topkapı Palace. While Cervantes presents autobiographical sections in this work, he also touches on some realities of his time.

Naturally, in the captivity-themed works of Cervantes, he frequently mentions the Turks. However, it cannot be said that the Turkish image that Cervantes reveals and reflects in these works is positive. Naturally, the reasons such as the fact that the Turks lived a life of captivity at the hands of the Turks and the difference in religion have a share in this. At the same time, there was no way he could write well about Spain's greatest enemy or draw attention to its positive aspects, for otherwise his novels would not have been published.

Cervantes' full name El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha is considered to be the forerunner of the modern novel. Contrary to popular belief, Don Quixote is a novel that includes much more than a madman attacking windmills and his silly groom. It is the first modern novel that tries to grasp new times, is aware of the great transformation, heralds the dawn of modernity, questions how real reality is, dazzles its readers with the magic of the word, and is full of thoughts and thoughts. Just as Don Quixote is caught between two worlds, Cervantes is caught between Homer and Balzac. For this reason, he is the last poet to tell an epic and the first novelist to fictionalize a novel in the modern sense. He published the first volume of Don Quixote in 1605 and the second volume in 1615.

Cervantes died in Madrid in 1616 at the age of 69. It is known that the bodies of Cervantes and his wife Catalina de Salazar were buried in the Trinitarian Monastery, which was built between 1698-1730, but the exact location of the tomb was not known. In 2015, a team of about 30 researchers announced that the tomb and bones, which were found in their first studies with infrared cameras, three-dimensional scanning devices, and special radars to determine the exact location of the tomb, belonged to the famous author.