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Rh at length the allegiance, though not the fashion of it, has been changed in our own days, and Paris has replaced Shīrāz as the shrine towards which the Ottoman scholar turns. While conspicuously lacking in creative genius, the Ottomans have always shown themselves possessed of receptive and assimilative powers to a remarkable degree, the result being that the number of their writers both in prose and verse is enormous. Of course only a few of the most prominent, either through the intrinsic merit of their work or through the influence they have had on that of their contemporaries, can be mentioned in a brief review like the present. It ought to be premised that the poetry of the old school is greatly superior to the prose.

Ottoman literature may be said to open with a few mystic lines, the work of Sultān Veled, son of Maulānā Jelāl-ud-Dīn, the author

of the great Persian poem the Mathnawī. Sultān Veled flourished during the reign of ‛Osmān I., though he did not reside in the territory under the rule of that prince. Another mystic poet of this early time was ‘Āshiḳ Pasha, who left a long poem in rhyming couplets, which is called, inappropriately enough, his Dīvān. The nocturnal expedition across the Hellespont by which Suleimān, the son of Orkhan, won Galipoli and therewith a foothold in Europe for his race, was shared in and celebrated in verse by a Turkish noble or chieftain named Ghāzī Fāzil. Sheikhī of Kermiyān, a contemporary of Maḥommed I. and Murād II., wrote a lengthy and still esteemed mesnevī on the ancient Persian romance of Khusrev and Shīrīn; and about the same time Yaziji-oghlu gave to the world a long versified history of the Prophet, the Muḥammedīya. The writers mentioned above are the most important previous to the capture of Constantinople; but there is little literature of real merit prior to that event. The most notable prose work of this period is an old collection of stories, the History of the Forty Vezirs, said to have been compiled by a certain Sheikh-zāda and dedicated to Murād II. A few years after Constantinople passed into the hands of the Ottomans, some ghazels, the work of the contemporary Tatar prince, Mīr ‛Alī Shīr, who under the nom de plume of Nevāyī wrote much that shows true talent and poetic feeling, found their way to the Ottoman capital, where they were seen and copied by Aḥmed Pasha, one of the viziers of Maḥommed II. The poems of this statesman, though possessing little merit of their own, being for the most part translations from Nevāyī, form one of the landmarks in the history of Ottoman literature. They set the fashion of ghazel-writing; and their appearance was the signal for a more regular cultivation of poetry and a greater attention to literary style and to refinement of language. In Sinān Pasha (d. 1420), another minister of Maḥommed the Conqueror, Ottoman prose found its first exponent of ability; he left a religious treatise entitled Tazarru‛āt (Supplications), which, notwithstanding a too lavish employment of the resources of Persian rhetoric, is as remarkable for its clear and lucid style as for the beauty of many of the thoughts it contains. The most noteworthy writers of the Conqueror’s reign are, after Aḥmed and Sinān, the two lyric poets Nejātī and Zātī, whose verses show a considerable improvement upon those of Aḥmed Pasha, the romantic poets Jemālī and Hamdī, and the poetesses Zeyneb and Mihrī. Like most of his house, Maḥommed II. was fond of poetry and patronized men of letters. He himself tried versification, and some of his lines which have come down to us appear quite equal to the average work of his contemporaries. Twenty-one out of the thirty-four sovereigns who have occupied the throne of ‛Osmān have left verses, and among these Selīm I. stands out, not merely as the greatest ruler, warrior and statesman, but also as the most gifted and most original poet. His work is unhappily for the greater part in the Persian language; the excellence of what he has done in Turkish makes us regret that he did so little. The most prominent man of letters under Selīm I. was the legist Kemāl Pasha-zāda, frequently called Ibn-Kemāl, who distinguished himself in both prose and verse. He left a romantic poem on the loves of Yūsuf and Zuleykhā, and a work entitled Nigāristān, which is modelled both in style and matter on the Gulistān of Sa‛dī. His contemporary, Mesīhī, whose beautiful verses on spring are perhaps better known in Europe than any other Turkish poem, deserves a passing mention.

With the accession of Selīm’s son, Suleimān I., the classical period begins. Hitherto all Ottoman writing, even the most highly

finished, had been somewhat rude and uncouth; but now a marked improvement becomes visible alike in the manner and the matter, and authors of greater ability begin to make their appearance. Fuzūlī (d. 1563), one of the four great poets of the old school, seems to have been a native of Bagdad or its neighbourhood, and probably became an Ottoman subject when Suleimān took possession of the old capital of the caliphs. His language, which is very peculiar, seems to be a sort of mixture of the Ottoman and Āzerbaijān dialects of Turkish, and was most probably that of the Persian Turks of those days. Fuzūlī showed far more originality than any of his predecessors; for, although his work is naturally Persian in form and in general character, it is far from being a mere echo from Shirāz or Isfahān. He struck out a new line for himself, and was indebted for his inspiration to no previous writer, whether Turk or Persian. An intense and passionate ardour breathes in his verses, and forms one of the most remarkable as well as one of the most attractive characteristics of his style; for, while

few even among Turkish poets are more artificial than he, few seem to write with greater earnestness and sincerity. His influence upon his successors has scarcely been as far-reaching as might have been expected—a circumstance which is perhaps in some measure owing to the unfamiliar dialect in which he wrote. Besides his Dīvān, he left a beautiful mesnevī on the story of Leylī and Mejnūn, as well as some prose works little inferior to his poetry. Bāḳī (d. 1599) of Constantinople, though far from rivalling his contemporary Fuzūlī, wrote much good poetry, including one piece of great excellence, an elegy on Suleimān I. The Ottomans have as a rule been particularly successful with elegies; this one by Bāḳī has never been surpassed. Rūhi, Lāmi‛ī, Nev‛ī, the janissary Yahya Beg, the muftī Ebū-Su‛ūd and Selīm II. all won deserved distinction as poets. During the reign of Aḥmed I. arose the second of the great poets of the old Ottoman school, Nef‛ī of Erzerūm, who owes his pre-eminence to the brilliance of his ḳasīdas. But Nef‛ī could revile as well as praise, and such was the bitterness of some of his satires that certain influential personages who came under his lash induced Murād IV. to permit his execution. Nef‛ī, who, like Fuzūlī, formed a style of his own, had many to imitate him, of whom Ṣabrī Shākir, a contemporary, was the most successful. Nā‛ilī, Jevrī and Fehīm need not detain us; but Nābī (d. 1712), who flourished under Ibrāhīm and Maḥommed IV., calls for a little more attention. This prolific author copied, and so imported into Ottoman literature, a didactic style of ghazel-writing which was then being introduced in Persia by the poet Ṣā‛ib; but so closely did the pupil follow in the footsteps of his master that it is not always easy to know that his lines are intended to be Turkish. A number of poets, of whom Seyyid Vehbī, Rāghib Pasha, Raḥmī of the Crimea, Kelīm and Sāmī are the most notable, took Nābī for their model. Of these, Sāmī is remarkable for the art with which he constructed his ghazels. Among the writers of this time who did not copy Nābī are Sābit, Rāsikh and Ṭālib, each of whom endeavoured, with no great success, to open up a new path for himself. We now reach the reign of Aḥmed III., during which flourished Nedīm, the greatest of all the poets of the old school. Little appears to be known about his life further than that he resided at Constantinople and was alive in the year 1727 ( 1140). Nedīm stands quite alone: he copied no one, and no one has attempted to copy him. There is in his poetry a joyousness and sprightliness which at once distinguish it from the work of any other Turkish author. His ghazels, which are written with great elegance and finish, contain many graceful and original ideas, and the words he makes use of are always chosen with a view to harmony and cadence. His ḳasīdas are almost equal to his ghazels; for, while they rival those of Nef‛ī in brilliancy, they surpass them in beauty of diction, and are not so artificial and dependent on fantastic and far-fetched conceits. The classical period comes to an end with Nedīm; its brightest time is that which falls between the rise of Nef‛ī and the death of Nedīm, or, more roughly, that extending from the accession of Aḥmed I. 1603 (1012), to the deposition of Aḥmed III., 1730 (1143).

We will now glance at the prose writers of this period. Under the name of Humāyūn Nāma (Imperial Book) ‛Alī Chelebi made

a highly esteemed translation of the well-known Persian classic Anvār-i Suheylī, dedicating it to Suleimān I. Classical Sa‛d-ud-Dīn (d. 1599), the preceptor of Murād III., wrote a valuable history of the empire from the earliest times to the death of Selīm I. This work, the Tāj-ut-Tevārīkh (Crown of Chronicles), is reckoned, on account of its ornate yet clear style, one of the masterpieces of the old school, and forms the first of an unbroken series of annals which are written, especially the later among them, with great minuteness and detail. Of Sa‛d-ud-Dīn’s successors in the office of imperial historiographer the most remarkable for literary power is Na‛īmā. His work, which extends from 1591 (1000) to 1659 (1070), contrasts strongly with that of the earlier historian, being written with great directness and lucidity, combined with much vigour and picturesqueness. Evliyā, who died during the reign of Maḥommed IV., is noted for the record which he has left of his travels in different countries. About this time Ṭash-köpri-zāda began and ‛Aṭā-ullāh continued a celebrated biography of the legists and sheikhs who had flourished under the Ottoman monarchs. Ḥājī Khalīfa, frequently termed Kātib Chelebi, was one of the most famous men of letters whom Turkey has produced. He died in 1658 (1068), having written a great number of learned works on history, biography, chronology, geography and other subjects. The Persianizing tendency of this school reached its highest point in the productions of Veysī, who left a Life of the Prophet, and of Nergisī, a miscellaneous writer of prose and verse. Such is the intentional obscurity in many of the compositions of these two authors that every sentence becomes a puzzle, over which even a scholarly Ottoman must pause before he can be sure he has found its true meaning. The first printing-press in Turkey was established by an Hungarian who had assumed the name of Ibrāhīm, and in 1728 (1141) appeared the first book printed in that country; it was Vanḳuli’s Turkish translation of Jevheri’s Arabic dictionary.

Coming now to the post-classigal period, we find among poets worthy of mention Belīgh, Nevres, Ḥishmet and Sunbuli-zāda Vehbī, each of whom wrote in a style peculiar to himself. Three poets of note—Pertev, Neshet and Sheikh Ghālib—flourished under Selīm III. The last-named is the fourth great poet of the old