Faroqhi S.N. The Cambridge History of Turkey: Volume 3, The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839

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dealt with these matters. Yet for our understanding of the relationship between

society and culture, and of the cultural needs of the Ottoman literary public,

it would be most helpful to understand when the major genres emerged, in

what periods and in which milieus they became most popular, and what their

relative standing may have been.

While many poets wrote in a variety of genres, depending on their educa-

tions and experiences, the compilers of poets’ biographies cum anthologies

(s¸u‘ar

a tezkireleri) generally only mentioned those in which they esteemed the

writers in question to have excelled. We will follow this example by selecting

certain genres that were of particular signiﬁcance during the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries, namely s¸arkı, hiciv, vefey

atn

ame, s

urn

ame, bil

adiyye and

men

akıbn

ame. The biographies of poets will also occupy us, as they are both

an indispensable source and a genre to be studied in the present context. The

same applies to the verses (t

ıh manz

umeleri) which contain the dates of a

building or historical event, and that can be deciphered only if one knows the

numerical values of the different letters of the Arabic alphabet (ebced).

Halil Erdo

gan Cengiz has deﬁned the s¸arkı as a poem meant to be sung, or

more generally as a poem with a melody; he thus views the s¸arkı as a literary

form and not as a type of verse.

This kind of poetry can take the shapes known

as murabba, muhammes and m

useddes; the topic is often love and, compared to

other types of poem, the language is rather simple. N

a’il

ı the Elder (d. 1666)is

the ﬁrst author to have included eleven s¸arkı in his collection of poems; it is these

pieces that refer most obviously to the writer’s environment, containing more

local colour than his other works. In s¸arkıs written by poets, from Ned

ım to

Ender

unlu V

asıf, we ﬁnd referencesto Istanbul and the Bosporus,to love affairs

that took place in these localities, and also to excursions and picnics.

The s¸arkı

gained in importance in the course of the eighteenth century, as is apparent

from the numerous references to this kind of poetry in the contemporary

biographical dictionaries. When Dam

Ibr

ım Pas¸a was grand vizier and

the appreciation of ‘having a good time’ was at its height, Mehmed Feyz

produced s¸arkıs that became famous, and one of them was set to music in the

mak

am Sab

20 Some of the major genres were tevh

ıd, na‘t, mi‘r

aciyye, m

at, hilye, kısas–ı enbiy

a, kırk

had

ıs, kıy

afetn

ame, gazav

atn

ame, mersiyye, s

ın

ame, s

urn

ame, sey

ahatn

ame, sef

aretn

ame,

vefey

atn

ame, men

akıbn

ame, s¸ehr-eng

ız, bil

adiyye, tezkire, hicviyye, l

ugaz and mu‘amm

21 Halil Erdo

gan Cengiz, ‘Divan s¸iirinde musammatlar’, T

urk Dili: T

urk S¸iiri

Ozel Sayısı II

Divan S¸iiri 415–17 ( July–September 1986), 291–429,atpp.334–5.

22 Among the better-known authors of s¸arkı, we might mention the following: Naz

ım

(d. 1727), S

ami (d. 1733), Rahm

ı (d. 1751), Fıtnat Hanım (d. 1780), N

as¸id (d. 1791), S¸eyh

alib (d. 1799),

Ilh

ı (d. 1808), F

azıl Bey Ender

ı (d. 1810), Ender

unlu V

asıf (d. 1824).

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Writing satirical and often scurrilous poetical attacks (hiciv, hezel)was

widespread among authors of this time. Thus the Mevlevi dervish S¸

ı, who

succeeded his father as a prayer leader in Istanbul’s well-known Ka‘riyye

mosque, was famous for his skill in this genre, and his verses, which fol-

lowed the trend set by Rahm

ı Kub

ız

ade Hav

ı (d. 1715) were frequently

quoted all over town. But probably because this was not exactly a genteel type

of writing, we do not ﬁnd S¸

ı’s name in the Tezkire-i S¸u‘ar

a-yı Mevleviyye,

a biographical dictionary of writers belonging to this order put together by

Esr

ar Dede, with the support of the famous poet S¸eyh G

alib. According to the

biographer of the poet Rah

ım

ı (d. 1727–8), the latter and his contemporary

ı engaged in amusing repartee, which became instantly popular among

readers and listeners.

But the most prominent writer of satires aiming at individuals was surely

Nef‘

ı (d. 1635). In his collection of poems which he called Sih

am-ı kaz

a (‘the

shafts of doom’) we ﬁnd not only harsh criticisms and threats, but also insults

and even indecencies. His satire can be considered the exact opposite of madh,

or panegyric, a genre he also occasionally practised, the mechanical reversal of

the language of the latter automatically yielding the former. In his hiciv Nef‘

used taboo words as weapons in order to lower the social or ritual status of

his victims, who typically belonged to the politically powerful and scholarly

milieu; the author did not spare even his own father. Fellow poets were also

often his targets, and they might respond in kind. In the long run, Nef‘

ı made

quite a few enemies and, due to his lack of moderation, he lost his position.

In the end he was killed because he did not keep the promise he had made to

Sultan Mur

ad IV in person that he would not write any more poetic attacks;

how exactly he met his end remains unclear.

Beginning with the seventeenth century, the biographical dictionaries tell

us that some poets and prose writers produced works that they called vefey

at.

These volumes contain the death dates of the people treated, and that is why

they are referred to by a term derived from the word for death (vefat); oth-

erwise, the books in question are short biographical dictionaries. Mehmed

Sel

ıs

ı from Bursa collected the biographies of religious scholars and dervish

sheikhs that had died in Bursa under the name Vefey

at.

More ambitiously,

Seyyid Has

ıb-i

Usk

ı’s (d. 1785) encyclopaedia begins with Adam and cov-

ers personages important for Islam, and especially the Ottoman world; his

work is known as Vefey

at-ı ek

abir-i

Isl

amiyye; in a similar vein, Alaybeyiz

ade

Mehmed Em

ın (d. 1666) gathered the death dates and short biographies

23 Altuner, ‘Saf

ı’, pp. 239, 346–7.

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of about 7,000 people in his work called Vefey

at-ı p

ur-‘iber li

uli’l-elb

abı

men‘ihteber.

But the most original of the vefey

at writers was surely H

afız H

useyin

Ayvansar

ı (d. 1787).

In the janissary corps, he had ﬁlled the ofﬁce of a bal-

tacılar kethud

ası. Among other works he produced Vefey

at-ı sel

ın ve mes¸

ahir-i

ric

al, which featured many verses containing the death dates of the persons cov-

ered, hidden in the last line of the text. He also produced a second biographical

dictionary named Terc

umet

u’l-mes¸

ayihin, also known as Vefey

at-ı Ayvansar

ı.

But this author is best known for his exhaustive reference work on the mosques

and dervish lodges of the Ottoman capital, in which we ﬁnd information on the

men and women who had established pious foundations and the inscriptions

that the latter so often featured. His anthology of verses (Mecmu‘

a-i tev

arih)

concealing dates is of special interest due to its numerous references to histor-

ical buildings that have since disappeared. Ayvansar

ı also edited a collection

of poetry of the m

ustez

ad type by different authors, to which he added similar

verses of his own creation; the result was an Es¸‘arn

ame-i m

ustez

ad. Unfortu-

nately, we still know too little about the literary history of the eighteenth cen-

tury to explain how Ayvansar

ı came to work in such unusual genres. That his

name is not mentioned in the standard biographical encyclopaedias may indi-

cate that his work did not conform to the understanding of genre prevalent in

the 1700s.

From the ﬁfteenth century onwards, it had become customary to sing

the praises of a given city in works known by the name of s¸ehr-eng

ız; in the

seventeenth century, we encounter compositions known as bil

adiyye, the term

being derived from bil

ad, the plural of belde (city). In these texts, written by

authors such as Fas

ıh

ı (dates unknown), Ferd

ı (d. between 1708 and 1710)

and Dervish ‘

Omer (dates unknown), we ﬁnd discussions of the relationship

between the author and his town, and sometimes these pieces also reﬂect the

writer’s vision of his larger geographical environment.

Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror initiated the custom of holding state festiv-

ities upon the occasion of dynastic events, such as the circumcisions of princes

and the weddings of the sultans’ daughters and sisters. These celebrations

24 G

unay Kut and Turgut Kut, ‘Ayvansaray

ı Hafız H

useyin b.

Ismail ve eserleri’,

Istanbul

Universitesi Edebiyat Fak

ultesi Tarih Dergisi 33 (1980–81), 401–39; Hafız H

useyin al-

Ayvansaray

ı, The Garden of the Mosques: Hafız H

useyin al-Ayvansaray

ı’s Guide to the Muslim

Monuments of Ottoman Istanbul, trans. and annotated by Howard Crane (Leiden, Boston

and Cologne, 2000).

25 Cemal Kurnaz, ‘Arayıcız

ade H

useyin Ferd

ıveDervis¸

Omer Efendi’nin bil

adiyyeleri’,

Journal of Turkish Studies, T

urkl

uk Bilgisi Aras¸tırmaları 19 (1995), In Memoriam Abd

ulbaki

olpınarlı, 2 vols., vol. I, pp. 299–316.

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Ottoman literature

were important in several respects: increased consumption provided work for

artisans and the palace was able to demonstrate its power and prestige, while

for ordinary people a few days of celebration provided a welcome respite

from the boredom and tensions of everyday life. Literary works describing

these festivities are known as s

urn

ames. They were written in prose, in verse,

or in a mixture of the two. The ﬁrst such works were composed for the

circumcision of Prince Mehmed, later Mehmed III, in 1582, and the genre

continued to be productive until 1858; in almost 300 years, nineteen works

were written to cover eleven different festivities. At times when economic

crises or military defeats made life seem problematic, dynastic festivities were

often celebrated with special pomp. Thus, of the eleven festivities covered

by s

urn

ames, six were held during the difﬁcult years of the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries, and nine of the nineteen known s

urn

ames were con-

cerned with these particular celebrations. Among the authors there were

important literary ﬁgures such as N

ı, ‘Abd

ı, Vehb

ı, Haz

ın and Has¸met;

thus these texts do not only contain pieces of information of interest to the

social and economic historian, but should also be studied for their literary

value.

It is worth noting that the men

akıbn

ame genre, which described the vitas and

miracles of famous dervish sheikhs, continued to be popular in the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries, and even experienced a certain revival, although

there were at least partial changes of content. This predilection may be due

to the fact that recurrent socio-economic crises made people more inclined

to place their faith in the next world, and this in turn meant that dervish

orders attracted numerous adherents. Quite a few men

akıbn

ames focused on

Turkish sheikhs of the recent past, often resident in small towns. This ran

counter to the tendency, otherwise widespread throughout the Islamic world,

of composing the biographies of suﬁ sheikhs with a wide appeal both within

and outside their orders. But interest in major ﬁgures, who may well have

lived several centuries before their vitas were written down, certainly did not

disappear: thus the well-known historian and poet Nev‘

ız

ade ‘At

ı wrote the

vita of ‘Az

ız Mahm

ud H

ı (d. 1628), founder of the Celvetiyye order of

dervishes; his work bore the title Men

akıb-ı S¸eyh Mahm

ud el-

Usk

ı.

to the founder of the S¸a‘b

aniyye order, S¸eyh S¸a‘b

an-ı Vel

ı, he was immor-

talised in a vita written by another prominent member of his order, ‘

Omer b.

Muhammed el-Kastamon

ı. The life and miracles of Niy

ı-i Mısr

ı (d. 1694), a

26 Originally this biography was part of the author’s broadly based biographical dictionary,

Had

aiki’l-hak

aik ﬁ tekm

ıleti’s¸-s¸ak

aik. It was later separated out to form a volume of its

own.

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famous mystic, were gloriﬁed in the Vakı‘

at-ı Mısr

ı by

Ibr

ım R

akım Efendi

(d. 1750).

A novelty of the eighteenth century was the emergence of biographical

collections covering dervish sheikhs exclusively: previously saints’ vitas had

either discussed single individuals or else they were part of larger biographical

dictionaries also encompassing scholars. In collections of this type the customs

and polite manners speciﬁc to a particular dervish order might be discussed as

well. Thus La‘l

ız

ade ‘Abd

ulb

ı Efendi (d. 1746), of the Bayr

ı-Mel

ı order,

composed the Men

akıb-ı Mel

amiyye-i Bayr

amiyye, covering important fellow

dervishes; and slightly later, the same subject was treated by M

ustakimz

ade

uleym

an Sa‘dedd

ın (d. 1787).

It is worth stressing in this context that in the 1700s and 1800s there were

three major literary currents: the so-called Indian style (sebk-i hind

ı); that of

the poets associated with N

ı; and ﬁnally the type of writing favoured by

authors wishing to bring literary expression closer to contemporary speech.

As representatives of the ﬁrst group we might mention Feh

ım-i Kad

ım (1627–

48) and Nes¸

ı, while N

ı himself and R

ı Mehmed Pas¸a can stand for

the second one; as to the third group, the most brilliant name is surely

Ned

ım.

A literary genre and a historical source:

the biographies of poets

In the world of Ottoman letters, biographical dictionaries were omnipresent;

thus even though we have already encountered a variety of examples we must

now turn to those works that focus speciﬁcally on poets. Early collections of

biographies tended to focus on the lives of people who in one way or another

had formed part of the ruling group; thus their authors attempted to give an

encompassing picture of the ‘great men’ in Ottoman society. However, by the

eighteenth century, the fashion for specialised dictionaries had become more

widespread. We have already encountered the dictionary of Mevlev

ı poets, the

Tezkire-i S¸u‘ar

a-yı Mevleviyye, which the author compiled because he felt that

the importance of his order in the realm of poetry had not been sufﬁciently

stressed in the more general encyclopaedias of poets.

27 Ahmet Yas¸ar Ocak, K

ult

ur tarihi kayna

gı olarak men

akıbn

ameler: metodolojik bir yaklas¸ım

(Ankara, 1992), pp. 62–5; Mustafa As¸kar, Tasavvuf tarihi literat

u (Ankara, 2001), pp. 186–

200.

28 As¸kar, Tasavvuf,pp.186–9.

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The ﬁrst Ottoman reference work focusing on poets was written by Seh

in 1538, and is known as Hes¸tbehis¸t.

Due to the preponderance of poetry in

Ottoman literature, the evaluations contained in works of this sort provide a

key to the contemporary understanding of literature in general. Typically the

tezkire writer will relayinformation about the poet’sname and pen-name, place

of origin, training and employment, while mentioning the more important

teachers from whom the author at issue has received his training. There follows

the date of the subject’s death, with a reference to the location of the grave if

known. At the end of the tezkire entry an anecdote or two may be recounted;

we also ﬁnd evaluations of the subject’s literary skills, a list of his (very rarely

her) works and a few sample pieces. This information will be more or less

developed, depending on how close or how distant were the relations between

subject and tezkire writer.

From the seventeenth century, seven collections of biographical sketches

survive: S

adık

ı’s Mecma‘

u’l-hav

as (completed 1602?), Riy

ı’s Riy

u’s¸-s¸u‘ar

(completed 1609), F

a’iz

ı’s Z

ubdet

u’l-es¸‘

ar (completed 1620), Rız

a’s Tezkire-i

s¸u‘ar

a (completed 1640), Y

umn

ı’s Tezkire-i s¸u‘ar

a (completed before 1662),

Asım’s Zeyl-i Z

ubdet

u’l-es¸‘

ar (completed before 1675) and G

uft

ı’s Tes¸r

ıfat

u’s¸-

s¸u‘ar

a (completed 1658–60). F

a’iz

ı, Y

umn

ıand

Asım are short on biographi-

cal information, so that their works rather resemble anthologies. G

uft

ı from

Edirne is unusual in that he produced a tezkire in 2,400 couplets of mesnev

verse; it contains information on 106 poets.

At the same time G

uft

ı’s work

shares certain features with Nef‘

ı’s Sih

am-ı kaz

a: the author does not hesitate

to ridicule those among his colleagues whose personalities or poetry do not

please him; due to the prevalence of jokes, satire and coarse language his work

mayalso be classiﬁed with hicivliterature.Fromthe eighteenth century wepos-

sess nine such biographical works, namely Muc

ıb, Tezkire-i s¸u‘ar

a (completed

1710), Saf

ı, Nuhbet

u’l-

ar min fev

adi’l-es¸‘

ar (completed 1721), S

alim, Tezkire-i

s¸u‘ar

a (completed 1721), Bel

g, Nuhbet

ui’l-

ar li-zeyl-i Z

ubdeti’l-es¸‘

ar (completed

1727), M

u’minz

ade Has

ıb, Silk

u’l-le

al-i

Al-i ‘Osm

an (completed 1730–4), Safvet,

Nuhbet

ui’l-

ar f

ıfev

adi’l-es¸‘

ar (completed 1782), R

amiz,

ab-ı Z

uref

a (com-

pleted 1783), Sil

ahd

arz

ade, Tezkire-i s¸u‘ar

a (completed 1789),

Akif, Mir‘

at-ı S¸i‘r

(comleted 1796), in addition to the Tezkire-i s¸u‘ar

a-yı Mevleviyye (completed

1796)byEsr

ar Dede, which we have already encountered.

In the eighteenth century we observe that tezkire authors go back to

sixteenth-century models, and pay increased attention to the biographies of

29 James Stewart-Robinson, ‘The Ottoman Biographies of Poets’, Journal of Near Eastern

Studies 24 (1965), 57–74;Haluk

Ipekten et al. (eds.), S¸air tezkireleri (Ankara, 2002).

30 K

as¸if Yılmaz, G

uft

ıveTes¸r

ıf

u’s¸-s¸u‘ar

ası (Ankara, 2001).

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the writers they treat. This helps us to place certain pieces of information in

their proper context: thus when Mehmed ‘Uy

ı became a scribe in an ofﬁce

managing Istanbul’s water supply, he wrote a work in verse that he called Nev-

‘ic

ad, in which he explained why dams and water reservoirs were a necessity;

he also provided detailed information on the people who had ordered their

construction.

Among eighteenth-century collections of poets’ biographies, the work of

u’minz

ade Has

ıb (d. 1747) called Silk

u’l-le

al-i

Al-i ‘Osm

an is noteworthy for

both content and form. To begin with, it is a general history in 18,000 cou-

plets containing an important section on poets’ biographies; in the sixteenth

century, Gelibolulu ‘

ı had organised his K

unh

u’l-ahb

ar in a similar fashion.

Moreover, the writer has mentioned his sources more often than customary,

yet interpreted them according to his own poetic skill and imagination. All the

poets included, ﬁfty-six in number, had lived in the earliest period of Ottoman

literature, namely between 1389 and 1481.

Has

ıb thought that in comparison with this early period, public esteem

for poets had declined: in Mehmed the Conqueror’s times, poets might be

promoted to the vizierate, while in his own period they were not likely to

receive more than simple praise from state ofﬁcials.

The author made it

quite clear that he had published his work in order to obtain the patronage of

Sultan Mahm

udI(r.1730–54), as he hoped for a position in the Ottoman state

apparatus.

Versiﬁed texts of great length were normally mesnev

ıs, in which every cou-

plet had its own separate rhyme. However, Has

ıb’s work took the shape of a

kas

ıde, in which every section began with a rhymed couplet whose rhyme was

then taken up in all the couplets comprising the relevant division of the work.

The author employed the same metre throughout, thus hybridising different

forms and genres.

A closer look at the collection of poets’ biographies (tezkire)bySaf

ı (d.

1725–6) gives us some idea of the genre conventions and social considerations

that might motivate an author to compose such a work. In his preface Saf

tells us that when reading collections of poetry in order to develop his literary

style, he was struck with admiration at the biographers who through their

works had preserved the memory of the poets of old. On discovering that no

book of this kind had been written since 1050/1640, he decided to ﬁll the gap. In

31 Altuner, ‘Saf

ı’, pp. 591–4.

32 Mustafa

Isen (ed.), K

unh

u’l-ahb

ar’ın tezkire kısmı (Ankara, 1994).

33 Menderes Cos¸kun, Manzum bir s¸airler tezkiresi: Has

ıb’in Silk

u’l-le’

al-i

Al-i ‘Osm

an’ınındaki

s¸air biyograﬁleri (Ankara, 2002), p. 29.

494

Ottoman literature

reality, ﬁve such biographical dictionaries cum anthologies had been written

between this year and the writer’s lifetime, but evidently he did not consider

them important. In line with his admiration of early Ottoman literature, Saf

proclaimed that he wished his book to resemble the tezkiresbyLat

ıf

ı, ‘

As¸ık

C¸ elebi, Riy

ı and Hasan C¸ elebi; in all these works the authorial contribution

was signiﬁcant, and the amount of sample poetry correspondingly limited.

Saf

ı had a busy ofﬁcial career, and his duties long prevented him from

turning his notes into a deﬁnitive full-ﬂedged book; he was only able to do

this when he was out of ofﬁce for a while. Later on he obtained the patronage

of the grand vizier Dam

Ibr

ım Pas¸a and was appointed ﬁnance director

(defterd

ar)ofthes¸ıkk-ı s

ı rank; he retained this ofﬁce until his death. The

author also managed to get eighteen of the foremost poets of the age to write

comments on his work to be reproduced in the preface (takr

ız); they all praised

the writer’s achievements.

However, these laudatory texts were not always

without ambiguity: thus S

alim, one of the takr

ız writers, claimed in one of

his other works that Saf

ı was incapable of distinguishing the good from

the bad, and also wrote in a very simple style. This was why he, S

alim, had

decided to write a tezkire in more ornate prose, even though the inspiration

had probably come from the work of his predecessor. Yet Saf

ı himself, when

commenting on S

alim’s work, had only praise for his colleague’s personality

and achievements. In a similar vein, when the poet laureate T

a’ib selected

Seyyid Vehb

ı (d. 1736) as his successor, the latter celebrated his elevation by a

well-known kas

ıde; he also claimed that Saf

ı’s discernment was not equal to

the task he had set himself. The poet R

amiz (1736–88), who also produced an

encyclopaedia of poets, was just as critical of Saf

ı’s all-too-simple style, but

praised his colleague for the reliability of the information provided.

What was the function of all these takr

ız in the preface of Saf

ı’s work?

Our sources describe this author as a somewhat na

ıve person. Possibly he

had induced these eighteen literary ﬁgures to add their comments in order

to deﬂect criticism of his enterprise in advance, but that question can only be

answered when we know more about the customs of the literary world in that

period. That the author was responsive to criticism is apparent from the long

time that it took him to complete his work: within twenty-ﬁve years, he revised

his encyclopaedia no less than four times, at least in part due to objections

from his readers. How Saf

ı went about soliciting aid can be guessed from his

relations with S

akıb Dede, an inﬂuential dervish sheikh from K

utahya. Upon

Saf

ı’s request for a gazel to be included in his collection, S

akıb Dede sent two

34 Altuner, ‘Saf

ı’, pp. 1–31. 35 Ibid., pp. 1–32.

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samples and added a letter. Saf

ı claimed that he had included this missive in

his collection in order to demonstrate the sheikh’s skill in prose-writing, but it

is quite possible that he really wanted to show off his good relations with this

highly respected individual.

Poetry, poets and patronage

It has often been said that Arabic and Persian poetry constitutes the living his-

tory of the peoples from whom the poets emerged. Even though the Ottoman

practitioners of this art had learned so much from their predecessors, they

successfully adjusted techniques, rhetorical devices, topics and genres to the

conditions of their times, so that Ottoman poetry also is a mirror of Ottoman

society and culture. From the seventeenth century onwards in particular, poets

tended to increase the number of references to situations which they had expe-

rienced, and we can thus say that poetry in Turkish acquired a local ﬂavour.

Thus between 1617 and 1627,Nev‘

ız

ade ‘At

ı composed the ﬁve mesnev

ıs

known as the Hamse-i ‘At

ı; here he foregrounded Istanbul and its inhabitants

in a way unknown to earlier mesnev

ı writers.

In discussing what literate contemporaries thought about poetry, we will

concentrate on the comments of R

amiz in the

ab-ı Z

uref

a, his biographical

work cum anthology that covers poets active between 1720 and 1784. Being

able to write good poetry in Arabic and Persian was evidently grounds for

high praise; for this meant that the author not only knew the two languages

extremely well, but was also in control of the different skills needed for suc-

cessful versiﬁcation. If a writer had produced both poetry and artistic prose,

his skills in these two modes of writing would be discussed separately. R

amiz

praised successful kas

ıde writers as well, but in this case, he found it necessary

to state for whom or for what reason the piece in question had been produced.

Poetic works concealing dates and riddles were also mentioned, but here it was

evidently skill rather than poetic inspiration that counted. R

amiz, however,

had a high opinion of this ability: he frequently cited poems conveying dates as

examples, or praised authors who produced elegant specimens of this genre.

If an author preferred satire or love poems, his contemporaries would take

note of the fact; those who were able to write poetry differing in content

and style from that of their colleagues were called tarz s

ahibi (possessors

of individual styles). Poets and writers read the work of their predecessors

and contemporaries; thus a continuous evaluation was in process. ‘Popularity

36 Ibid., pp. 138–9.

496

Ottoman literature

among one’s peers’, judged from the frequency with which the manuscripts of

a given author circulated among knowledgeable people, was also a quality of

which evaluators would take note: this applied for instance to both the poems

and the chronicle of R

as¸id Efendi (d. 1735–6).

A very broad notion of literary skill is reﬂected in a story that Evliy

aC¸ elebi

(1611–after 1683), author of a famous seventeenth-century travelogue, has told

about the manner in which he was introduced to Mur

ad IV (r. 1623–40).

When the sultan ordered him to recite something, Evliy

a responded by ask-

ing in which of the seventy-two climes of the Islamic world the ruler was

interested;the young page cum litterateurcould offerpoems in Persian,Arabic,

(contemporary) Greek, Hebrew, Syrian, (ancient) Greek and Turkish. Evliy

also wanted to know whether Murad wanted to hear music of a particular

mak

am or poems of a given type; among the latter he mentioned bahr-i tav

ıl,

kas

ıde, terc

ı‘-bend, terk

ıb-bend, mersiyye, ‘ıydiyye, mu‘as¸s¸er, m

usemmen, m

usebba‘,

useddes, muhammes, gazel, kıt‘a, m

uselsel, d

u-beyt, m

ufred and il

ı. Obviously

Evliy

a, who once claimed that he was capable of reciting the entire Qur’an

in seven hours, was sure of both his knowledge and his memory. The sultan

seems to have felt the challenge; he tested Evliy

a and became convinced that

the latter’s claims were true. Evliy

a’s list, with its emphasis on types of poetry

also practised in Arabic and Persian, tells us something about what, in the

early seventeenth century, was meant by ‘a broad knowledge of literature’.

Evliy

a had evidently followed the recommendations of all masters of literary

theory and rhetoric throughout the Islamic world, who advised that the novice

should memorise vast quantities of verses and model his own attempts upon

them. An aspiring author was expected to develop his (or, in exceptional cases,

her) skills by constantly re-reading the poetry of the great masters, especially

those of the Iranian tradition.

As to the authors of biographical dictionaries,

they frequently told us which particular master a given poet had learned by

heart.

Poetry as a language conveyed through ornaments

and architecture

In the Ottoman realm most poetry was recited or else written on paper;

but in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries especially, there were other

37 Sadik Erdem, R

amiz ve

ab-ı Zuraf

a’sı: inceleme-tenkidli metin-indeks-S

ozl

uk (Ankara,

1994), p. 110.

38 Evliy

aC¸ elebi Seyahatn

amesi, vol. I, p. 100.

Omer Faruk Ak

un, ‘Divan edebiyatı’, TDV

Isl

am Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul, 1994), vol. 9,

p. 413.

497