Quand le Grand Turc s'appelait l'Amorat Baquin

Abstract

The way the sultan was formerly appointed is a modest, but curious document, on the judgment which the French public opinion carried on the growing power of the Ottoman empire. The most former generic naming of the sultan could indeed have been L’Amorat Baquin. We meet it in the last years of the XIVe century (Froissart’s chronicles, Jean Petit’s poems etc.). It is sometimes associated with a caricatural representation of the sultan (a jester, a swaggerer) and this image is imperative a century later. We meet another naming : L’Amorat Bahy. Both expressions disappear in front of Le Grand Turc or Le Turc. In the second half of the XVIe century, we do not find any more L’Amorat Baquin than at the antiquarians (Estienne, Pasquier, Brantôme). We propose an etymology. In a appendix, we examine the date and the manuscripts of Le Chevalier des dames, one of the texts where the expression is attested.