Ottoman Glories
31
Folk literature produced a large corpus of stories, tales, allegories,
fables, and riddles. Th
e common people’s dramatic imagination nurtured
the
Karagöz
shadow plays. It is signifi cant that
in these plays the two prin-
cipal characters, Karagöz and Hacivat, respectively represent a folksy,
good-hearted simpleton and a foxy, foolish blabbermouth who tries to
simulate urbane speech.
In Ottoman culture, no tragedy evolved, and comedy was confi ned to
Karagöz
and
commedia dell’arte
(Orta oyunu).
Tragedy places the human
predicament in an identifi able setting and usually depicts personal or social
rift s by dint of the vicissitudes of heroes, and
comedy pokes fun at society
in explicit terms. Ottoman society, in particular the establishment, con-
ceivably had little sympathy for such representations by live actors. Or per-
haps poetry was so pervasive and satisfying that authors did not consider it
necessary or useful to experiment with other genres. In the vacuum, satire
fl ourished. It performed the function of exposing folly, challenging pre-
vailing values, unmasking hypocrisy, and denouncing injustice. In more
recent times, the focal targets of satire have been morals and manners,
cant, political norms, and politicians themselves.
Th
e Ottoman elite was passionately devoted to poetry. Perhaps the
crowning achievement of Ottoman culture was poetry, which also served
as the propaedeutic to all other literary arts and as an element of visual and
plastic
arts such as calligraphy, architecture, and miniature painting as
well as of the decorative arts.
Divan
poetry, as the Turkish elite poetry that
was infl uenced by Arabic and Persian literature is oft en called, found favor
at the court and at the coff eehouse, satisfying the aesthetic needs of both
the elite and the man in the street. Signifi cantly, two-thirds of the sultans
were poets—some, in particular Mehmed “the Conqueror” (1432–81) and
Süleyman the Magnifi cent (1494–1566), were fi rst rate.
“Prose,” as E. J. W. Gibb observed, “was as a rule reserved for practical
and utilitarian purposes.”
1
Poets and intellectuals spurned prose as being
too easy. Nef’î, the great classical lyricist and satirist of the seventeenth
century, boasted:
1. E. J. W. Gibb,
A History of Ottoman Poetry,
6 vols. (London: Luzac, 1900–1909;
reprint,
Cambridge, U.K.: Trustees of the “E. J. W. Gibb Memorial,” 1963–84), 1:iii.
32
A Millennium of Turkish Literature
I would not deign to write prose, but if I did
Heavenly angels would chant it time and again.
Verse oft en preempted the functions of prose. As a consequence, in addi-
tion to the massive output of lyric and mystic poetry, a great many didac-
tic, theological, narrative, historical, and scholarly works were also written
in verse.
Th
ese works included chronicles of war
and conquest, albums of fes-
tivities and weddings, books of counsel, and other types of writing. In the
nineteenth century, versifi ers even came up with a chemistry textbook in
poetic form and Turkish–French, Turkish–Armenian, and Turkish–Greek
dictionaries in meter and rhyme.
Notwithstanding the classical poets’ pejorative view of prose, a fair
retrospective assessment today leads one to numerous praiseworthy prose
works produced by the Ottomans: religious commentaries; narratives; epics
of the fourteenth and
fi ft eenth centuries; the histories of Âşıkpaşazade
(d. 1502), Neşrî (d. second decade of the sixteenth century),
2
Lütfi Pasha
(d. 1563), Âli (d. 1600), Peçevî (d. 1649?), Naima (d. 1716),
3
and Silâhtar
Mehmed (d. 1724); the theological treatises of Sinan Pasha (d. 1486); the
tract on ethics by Kınalızade Ali (d. 1572); the philosophical narratives of
Veysî (d. 1628); and the commentaries on reforms by İbrahim Müteferrika
(d. 1745), who also introduced the printing press to the Ottoman Empire,
and by Koca Sekbanbaşı (d. 1804). Among the chief works of Ottoman
prose are the monumental travelogues by Evliya Çelebi (d. 1682),
4
which
are fascinating accounts of geography, social and economic arrangements,
2. V. L. Menage,
Neshri’s History of the Ottomans
(London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964).
3. Lewis V. Th
omas,
A Study of Naima,
edited by Norman Itzkowitz (New York: New
York Univ. Press, 1972); and
Annals of the Turkish Empire from 1591 to 1659 of the Christian
Era,
translated by C. Fraser (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1832).
4. Evliya Çelebi,
Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa in the Seventeenth
Century,
2 vols., translated by Joseph von Hammer (London: Oriental Translation Fund,
1834–50). A new edition has been published in ten volumes:
Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi:
Topkapı Sarayı Bağdat 304 Yazmasının Transkripsiyonu-Dizini,
vols. 1 and 7–10 edited by
Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Kahraman, and Robert Dankoff ; vol. 2 edited by Zekeriya Kurşun,
Seyit Ali Kahraman, and Yucel Dağlı; vols. 3, 4, and 6 edited by Seyit Ali Kahraman and
Yücel Dağlı; vol. 5 edited by Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Karaman, and İbrahim Sezgin (Istanbul:
Yapı Kredi, 1999–2007).
Ottoman Glories
33
and culture and daily life; the political and cultural commentaries by Kâtip
Çelebi (d. 1658);
5
the
famous essay
(Risale)
about sociopolitical reforms by
Koçi Bey (seventeenth century); the ambassadorial journals of Yirmisekiz
Mehmed Çelebi (d. 1732); and the semisurrealistic imaginative stories by
Aziz Efendi (d. 1798).
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