- This article deals with the Ottoman Divan poetry tradition. For the tradition of folk poetry in the Ottoman Empire, see Turkish folk literature
Turkish folk literature is an oral tradition deeply rooted, in its form, in Central Asian nomadic traditions. However, in its themes, Turkish folk literature reflects the problems peculiar to a settling people who have abandoned the nomadic lifestyle...
.
The
poetry of the Ottoman Empire, or Ottoman
Divan-Etymology:The English usage of the phrase Diwan Poetry comes from the Arabic word diwan , which is loaned from Persian means designated a list or register. The Persian word derived from the Persian dibir meaning writer or scribe...
poetry, is fairly little known outside of modern
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, which forms the heartland of what was once the
Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
. It is, however, a rich and ancient poetic tradition that lasted for nearly 700 years, and one whose influence can still—to some extent—be felt in the
modern TurkishPoetry of the Republic of Turkey covers the "Turkish Poetry" beginning with 1911 with the national literature movement.In the early years of the Republic of Turkey, there were a number of poetic trends...
poetic tradition.
Even in modern Turkey, however, Ottoman Divan poetry is a highly specialist subject. Much of this has to do with the fact that Divan poetry is written in
Ottoman TurkishThe Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...
, was written using a variant of the
Arabic scriptThe Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
, and is as vastly different from the
Turkish languageTurkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
of today as it was from the standard spoken Turkish of its own day.
History
The Ottoman Divan poetry tradition embraced the influence of the Persian and, to a lesser extent,
ArabicArabic literature is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is adab which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and implies politeness, culture and enrichment....
literatures. As far back as the pre-Ottoman
SeljukThe Sultanate of Rum , also known as the Anatolian Seljuk State , was a Turkic state centered in in Anatolia, with capitals first at İznik and then at Konya. Since the court of the sultanate was highly mobile, cities like Kayseri and Sivas also functioned at times as capitals...
period in the late 11th to early 14th centuries CE, this influence was already being felt: the Seljuks conducted their official business in the Persian language, rather than in Turkish, and the poetry of the Seljuk court was highly inflected with Persian.
When the Ottoman Empire arose in northwestern
AnatoliaAnatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
, it continued this tradition. The most common poetic forms of the Ottoman court, for instance, were derived either directly from the Persian literary tradition (the
gazelThe ghazal is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The form is ancient, originating in 6th century...
; the
mesnevîMasnavi, or mathnawī, is the name of a poem written in rhyming couplets, or more specifically, “a poem based on independent, internally rhyming lines”. Most mathnawī followed a meter of eleven, or occasionally ten, syllables, but had no limit in their length...
), or indirectly through Persian from the Arabic (the
kasîdeThe qaṣīdaᵗ , in Arabic: قصيدة, plural qasā'id, قــصــائـد; in Persian: قصیده , is a form of lyric poetry that originated in preIslamic Arabia...
). However, the decision to adopt these poetic forms wholesale led to two important further consequences:
- the poetic meters (Persian: beher
Beher in Urdu poetry is the meter of a sher . It can be considered as the length of the sher. Both the lines in the sher, the couplet, must be of same beher. And all the shers in one ghazal must be of the same beher...
; Turkish: aruz) of Persian poetry were adopted
- Persian- and Arabic
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
-based words were brought into the Turkish language in great numbers, as Turkish words rarely worked well within the system of Persian poetic meter
Out of this confluence of choices, the Ottoman Turkish language—which was always highly distinct from standard Turkish—was effectively born. This style of writing under Persian and Arabic influence came to be known as "Divan literature" (Turkish
divân edebiyatı), as
divân was the Ottoman Turkish word referring to the collected works of a poet.
Beginning with the
TanzimatThe Tanzimât , meaning reorganization of the Ottoman Empire, was a period of reformation that began in 1839 and ended with the First Constitutional Era in 1876. The Tanzimât reform era was characterized by various attempts to modernize the Ottoman Empire, to secure its territorial integrity against...
reform period (1839–1876) of Ottoman history and continuing until the
dissolutionThe Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire included the watershed events of the Young Turk Revolution and the establishment of the Second Constitutional Era, and ended with the Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious sides of World War I.- Establishment of the Second Constitutional Era, 24...
of the empire in the early 20th century, the Divan poetic tradition steadily dwindled, and more and more influence from both Turkish folk literature and
European literatureEuropean literature refers to the literature of Europe.European literature includes literature in many languages; among the most important of the modern written works are those in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish, German, Italian, Modern Greek, Czech and Russian and works by the...
began to make itself felt.
Mesnevi
Mesnevi (
masnaviMasnavi, or mathnawī, is the name of a poem written in rhyming couplets, or more specifically, “a poem based on independent, internally rhyming lines”. Most mathnawī followed a meter of eleven, or occasionally ten, syllables, but had no limit in their length...
) in literary term "Rhyming Couplets of Profound Spiritual Meaning" is style developed in Persian poetry which Nizami Ganjavi and
JamiNur ad-Dīn Abd ar-Rahmān Jāmī also known as DJāmī, Mawlanā Nūr al-Dīn 'Abd al-Rahmān or Abd-Al-Rahmān Nur-Al-Din Muhammad Dashti who is commonly known as Jami , is known for his achievements as a scholar, mystic, writer, composer of numerous lyrics and idylls, historian, and one of the greatest...
are the famous poets of type. In Turkic literature first mesnevi was
Yusuf Has HajibYusuf Balasaghuni or Yusuf Khas Hajib Balasaghuni was an 11th century Uyghur scribe from the city of Balasaghun, the capital of the Karakhanid Empire. He wrote the Kutadgu Bilig and most of what is known about him comes from his own writings in this work.Balasagun was located near present-day...
's
Kutadgu BiligThe Kutadgu Bilig, or Qutadğu Bilig , is a Karakhanid work from the 11th century written by an Uyghur author of Balasagun for the prince of Kashgar. Translated, the title means something like "The Wisdom which brings Happiness" or "The Wisdom that Conduces to Royal Glory or Fortune" , but has...
. Generally social concepts
FerdowsiFerdowsi was a highly revered Persian poet. He was the author of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran and related societies.The Shahnameh was originally composed by Ferdowsi for the princes of the Samanid dynasty, who were responsible for a revival of Persian cultural traditions after the...
's
ShahnamehThe Shahnameh or Shah-nama is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c.977 and 1010 AD and is the national epic of Iran and related societies...
,
FuzuliFużūlī was the pen name of the Azerbaijani or the Bayat branch of Oghuz Turkish and Ottoman poet, writer and thinker Muhammad bin Suleyman...
's Leyla ile Mecnun'u, military events, educational concepts such as
Yusuf NabiYusuf Nabi was a Turkish Divan poet in the court of Mehmet IV. He was famous for "his brilliant lyrics filled with popular sayings and critiques of the age and verses commenorating innumerable important occasions."...
's Hayriye or related to religion or philosophy such as Mevlana's
MasnaviThe Masnavi, Masnavi-I Ma'navi or Mesnevi , also written Mathnawi, Ma'navi, or Mathnavi, is an extensive poem written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, the celebrated Persian Sufi saint and poet. It is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufism and Persian literature...
is covered.
A peculiarity of the
masnavi of the Ottoman period is that they almost always possess, beneath the literal meaning, a subtle spiritual signification. Many poems, of Mesnevi of Mevlana and the
DivanA divan was a high governmental body in a number of Islamic states, or its chief official .-Etymology:...
of Aşık Paşha examples of confessedly religious, moral, or mystic but a much larger number are allegorical. To this latter class belong almost all the long romantic mesnevis of the Persian and mid Ottoman poets; in the stories of the loves of Leyla and Mecnun, Yusuf and Zuleykha, Kusrev and Shavin, Suleyman and Ebsal, and a hundred of like kind, can see pictured, if we look beneath the surface, the soul of man for God, or the yearning of the human heart after heavenly light and wisdom. There is not a character introduced into those romances but represents the passion not an incident but has some spiritual meaning. In the history of Iskender, or Alexander, we watch the noble human soul in its struggles against the powers of this world, and, when aided by God and guided by the heavenly wisdom of righteous teachers, its ultimate victory over every earthly passion, and its attainment of that point of divine serenity whence it can look calmly down on all sublunary things.
Kaside
Kaside is generally about God, religious or government leaders and their values. Most famous poets are Ahmed Paşa,
NecatiNecati is a Turkish given name for males. People named Necati include:* Necati Ateş, Turkish footballer* Necati Çelim , Turkish politician* Necati Cumalı , Turkish writer* Necati Şaşmaz, Turkish actor...
,
BâkîBâḳî was the pen name of the Ottoman Turkish poet Mahmud Abdülbâkî...
,
NedîmAhmet Nedîm Efendi was the pen name of one of the most celebrated Ottoman poets. He achieved his greatest fame during the reign of Ahmed III, the so-called Tulip Era from 1718 to 1730. Both his life and his work are often seen as being representative of the relaxed attitude and European...
, most importantly
Nef'iNef'i was an Ottoman poet and satirist.-Biography:Nef'i entered military service as a quartermaster with Grand Vizier Kuyucu Murad Pasha during his suppression of the Jelali revolts in Anatolia in the early 17th century...
.
Terminology:
- Tevhid: About the Unity of God.
- Münacaat: Prayer to God
- Naat: About religious leaders and the prophet.
- Methiye: About the sultan and government leaders.
- Nesip or teşbib: Nature and environment descriptions.
- Girizgah: Prelude to the topic.
- Fahriye: Praising the poet himself
- Dua: Prayer and well wishing for the subject of the poem
External links