Sancakname: The Medieval Manuscript That Shows a Helicopter… 800 Years Before Flight

There are a lot of strange things buried in dusty old manuscripts. We’ve heard stories about strange beasts, saints with eyes on their hands, even exploding snails. But sometimes, there’s a couple of ones that make us realize we’re not the first ones. You know — the ones that make lost advanced civilizations seem more than possible. One such example lives in a manuscript created centuries before the Wright brothers ever flapped a thought toward powered flight. It’s a quiet drawing in the Sancakname, an Ottoman manuscript from the 15th century. Inside its pages is a scene that shouldn’t exist. A man. Suspended from rotors. Something that looks, uncannily, like a helicopter.

The problem? Helicopters weren’t invented until the 20th century. This drawing is nearly 500 years too early.

A Flying Man in the Age of Sultans

Let’s start with the drawing itself. Tucked into this richly illustrated manuscript — a document full of ceremonial descriptions and religious symbolism — is a figure riding what appears to be a winged capsule, complete with rotor-like blades above it.

At first glance, it seems laughably out of place. Medieval manuscripts are supposed to show saints, monsters, maybe a moral tale about gluttony or lust. Not a flying machine that mirrors Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches or even, eerily, a modern ultralight helicopter.

To dig deeper, we have to talk about Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi, a real historical figure from 17th century Istanbul, whose story flirts with legend. According to Ottoman historian Evliya Çelebi, Hezarfen strapped wooden wings to his arms and flew from the top of the Galata Tower across the Bosphorus — a distance of over 3 kilometers — before landing safely in Üsküdar.

That was in the 1600s. But the ideas may have been circulating long before.

In fact, Arabic manuscripts from earlier centuries include discussions of flight — not just symbolic flight, but mechanical flight. Diagrams, rotating wings, buoyancy theory. Some of these ideas echo Da Vinci’s concepts… but they predate him with the Sancakname.

The Dendera Light, the Baghdad Battery, and a Pattern?

If this feels familiar, it’s because history has a weird habit of showing us things we’re not supposed to see. The Dendera Light — that strange bulb-shaped carving in an Egyptian temple. The Baghdad Battery (which we have a whole article on) is a clay pot with copper and iron that some think could generate electricity. And now, the medieval helicopter.

Of course, you can’t help but wonder — So, what was this weird thing? Well, there are a few theories:

• Symbolism: The image could represent a soul ascending, or divine transportation — a chariot of fire, reimagined in the visual language of the day.
• Lost technology: Some fringe historians believe ancient civilizations may have had greater mechanical knowledge than we give them credit for — and that these manuscripts are remnants of that.
• Creative imagination: Maybe it was just one scribe dreaming. A vision. A fantasy. Someone drawing the impossible because they wanted it to exist. And I can totally see this being the case.

Whatever the “real answer” may be — we’ll probably never know. However, I don’t know about you, but I’ll always be a fan of stories claiming that there was some lost, advanced civilization before us, and we’re just now catching up with them.

Sancakname makes me feel so small, but in the most comforting way possible.