[Garibname]

This material is held atBritish Library Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections

  • Reference
    • GB 59 Or 14383
  • Dates of Creation
    • 850
  • Name of Creator
  • Language of Material
    • Turkish
  • Physical Description
    • 1 text 332 ff Material: Good, thick cream-coloured laid paper; edges trimmed. Foliation: European, 332 folios plus 2 gold-sprinkled endpapers. Dimensions: 251 x 163 mm; text area 198 x 121 mm. Pricking and Ruling: 17 lines in double columns; catchwords. Headings and quotations in red. Text frames in gold and black. Script: Good nesih, fully vocalized. Binding: circa 18th century Ottoman maroon morocco with gilt embossed central medallions on covers and flap; spine and flap repaired.

Scope and Content

This volume contains the first full-scale didactic mesnevi poem composed in Old Anatolian Turkish. Its author is the Ottoman Turkish poet and Sufi Ali ibn-i Muhlis of Kirşehir, known as Aşık Paşa (670-733 AH/1272-1332 CE). He composed his highly influential and widely read Garibname in 730 AH/1330 CE. The work contains more than 11000 couplets across ten bablar, each subdivided into ten destanlar (legends). Aşık Paşa ranges over a profusion of Sufi and other doctrinal themes in rather pedestrian verse, with emphasis on numerical significances. This copy appears to be one of the oldest extant manuscripts of the text. Perhaps only a copy in Berlin from 840 AH/1436-37 CE and one in Paris dating to 848 AH/1444-5 CE are older. The British Library's Or 14571 also dates to 848 AH. The manuscript contains an illuminated heading in blue, gold and green, with a Besmele in gold nesih (repainted), on f 1v. The original table of contents is on f 331v-332r, while more recent page references to bablar can be found on 332v. The colophon on f 330r dates the work to 850 AH/1446-7 CE. The copyist signs his name as Mehmed ibn-i Mahmud el-Larendi. In view of the scribe's name, the manuscript may have been produced at Larende (present-day Karaman), or in Konya.

Access Information

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Related Material

Other copies of this work at the British Library are at Or 14571, Harley MS 5511, and Add MS 7932. See Rieu, Catalogue of Turkish Manuscripts in the British Museum, 160-2. A short extract can be found in Or 11059 (ff 68v-71v). On the author see Günay Kut, 'Aşik Paşa,' TDVİA, 4:1-3; Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, 'Aşik Paşa (Tasavvufî Şahsiyeti),' TDVİA, 4:3; Fahīr İz, 'ʿĀs̲h̲i̊ḳ Pas̲h̲a,' in EI2 (dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_0787). See also the references cited there for further information on Aşık Paşa and other early manuscript copies of his Garibname. On manuscript copies see also F. Köprülü, 'Aşık Paşa', İA, 1:701-6; Blochet, BN I:133-4; M. Götz, VOHD XIII/2, 18-19; and H. Sohrweide, VOHD XIII/3, 234-5.

Bibliography

Aşık Paşa, Garib-nâme, 2 volumes, edited by Kemal Yavuz (Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu Yayinlari, 2000).