Evliya Çelebi was born in Constantinople in 1611 to a wealthy family from Kütahya. Both his parents were attached to the Ottoman court, his father, Derviş Mehmed Zilli, as a jeweller, and his mother as an Abkhazian relation of the grand vizier Melek Ahmed Pasha. In his book, Evliya Çelebi traces his paternal genealogy back to Khoja Akhmet Yassawi, 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").