Faraḥ-nāma of Shaikhī

Abstract

Turning over the sheets of some of my old books I found a very complicated question in the field of Ottoman poetry which I wish to discuss below.The late Russian orientalist, V. D. Smirnov, in the second edition of his Turkish Chrestomathy, published a number of extracts from a Turkish (Ottoman) poem mathnawi entitled . In the preface he makes the following explanatory note concerning this poem (the square brackets are mine): “the extracts (pp. 433–437) are from , Budapest manuscript No. 24, dated 928/1522. And in the title of the codex we read, and in the text the author, many times mentioning himself, names himself (f. 13v., 120r., 210r.), (f. 107v.); thus it is certain that this work, written in 829/1425 is by Moḥammad ban Ṣāliḥ Bījān (+1449), the author of the famous Turkish religious poem . But neither in the European catalogues, nor in [the book of] Ḥājjī Khalīfa is there mentioned such a work with the name of Yāzījī Oghlī. The last [Ḥājjī Khalīfa] remarks quite vaguely that is a Turkish work in verses, belonging to Shaikh Zāda, who wrote it in the reign of the Sultan Yildirim (Ḥ.Kh. iv, 412, No. 9007). The poem of Ibn Khaṭīb is extremely interesting because of its archaic language and orthography, as well as because the religious-didactic thoughts of the author, which are contained in it, in the spirit and style of the Mawlawi works, like, for instance, of 'Āshiq, but, perhaps, with a little greater fanatical Moslem passion and enmity towards non-Moslems, especially Christians (for example, f. 128r., 209a–210).”