Overview

This book offers the first-ever partial English translation and commentary of what are arguably the two most important Ottoman biographical dictionaries of poets: the tezkires of Ak elebi and Latifi. While tezkires are mostly culled for their factual data, this book focuses on the non-entry materials, especially the prefaces. These offer intimate glimpses into the authors' lives, charting their professional ambitions, frustrations and feuds, set against the backdrop of the sixteenth-century Ottoman literary world a world in which patrimonial relations made and broke careers, poetry was appraised, attacked, monetised and stolen, and the ambitions of aspiring poets were fuelled and foiled. The two tezkires reflect this milieu, and their authors were personally acquainted, exchanging thoughts over their work and, finally, falling out over an accusation of plagiarism. The translations are supplemented with a reflection on the nature and translatability of Ottoman high prose, a discussion of the tezkire genre and a detailed presentation of the two authors and their dictionaries. Through a novel study of these interconnected works, this book provides a panorama of Ottoman literary history, as well as insights into the authors' personal struggles.

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9781399537612

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Reviews

In a manner that is both disarming in its playfulness and intimidating in its erudition, this book offers English readers their first chance to savor the high literary style of two foundational authors in sixteenth-century Ottoman Turkish--one of history's most deliciously difficult languages.--Giancarlo Casale, European University Institute

Author Information

Kristof D'hulster is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the University of Münster. He engages with the socio-political and cultural history of the pre- and early modern Islamic world, mapping processes of exchange, interaction and connectivity between the Arabic, Turkic, and Persian regions. Following his PhD on Turkic linguistics (KU Leuven, 2010), he was a research fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and of ERC projects in Ghent, Birmingham and Jena. Next to his first monograph, Browsing through the Sultan’s Bookshelves. Towards a Reconstruction of the Library of the Mamluk Sultan Qāniṣawh al-Ghawrī (Bonn University Library, 2021), recent publications include “Will I be Happy, Will I be Rich? Three Lot-Books (Qur‘a) from the Library of Qāniṣawh al-Muḥammadī” (al-‘Uṣūr al-Wusṭā, 2024) and “Qayt Sharīfī’s Turkic Class Notes and Tamurbāy’s First Arabic Scribbles: Language and Education at the Mamluk Barracks in Light of MS Ayasofya 1448” (Mamlūk Studies Review, 2025).

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