Who is Lagâri Hasan Çelebi ?
The nature of some Humans has always wanted to do the impossible, to try the untried. After all, don’t innovations and inventions arise because of this impulse? The desire to fly like birds, the urge to oppose gravity, and the desire to go from one point to another faster have been the main motivations in the development of aviation.
Some of the people who left their mark on aviation history had the desires I mentioned above. In this article, we will tell about a person (Lagâri Hasan Celebi) who was mentioned with an interesting experiment in the name of aviation during his lifetime. Although there is not much reliable information about him due to the scarcity of communication sources of his time, this man deserves to be found in aviation literature.
Life of Lagâri Hasan Çelebi
Lagâri Hasan Çelebi was an Ottoman aviator who, according to the account written by traveller Evliya Çelebi, made a successful crewed rocket flight.
It is rumored that Lagâri Hasan Çelebi flew with cartridges prepared from gunpowder paste during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan IV Murad. The information about him is based on what Evliya Çelebi told in his Book of Travels “Seyahatname”.
According to Evliya Çelebi, Lagâri Hasan Çelebi invented a firecracker in 1632-1633, during the festivities for the birth of IV Murad’s daughter Kaya Sultan. For this cartridge, 50 okka of powder paste was used and it has seven wings. Hasan Çelebi said, “My Sultan, I ordered you to the huda, I’m going to talk to the Prophet Jesus”, and got on the cartridge in the presence of the sultan in Sarayburnu and rose into the air when his assistants fired the cartridge.
When he fired the flares while in the air, the surface of the sea was illuminated. While his cartridge was running out of gunpowder, he opened the wings in his hands and went down to the sea in front of Sinan Pasha Mansion. From there, he swam to the presence of the sultan and said, “My Sultan, the Prophet Jesus saluted you.” as a joke. Sultan Murad made himself a “sipahi” because of this success.
Hasan Çelebi, who was supported by the sultan at first, was later tried under the pressure of the ulema and exiled to the Crimea. According to Evliya Çelebi, Lagâri went to the Crimea to visit Selamet Giray Khan and died there.
