[Tercüme-i Tezkiretü'l-evliya] - [ترجمهٔ تذكرة الاولياء]

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

  • Reference
    • GB 59 Or 15976
  • Dates of Creation
    • Late 15th century
  • Language of Material
    • Turkish
  • Physical Description
    • 1 text 405 ff. Material: Good thick off-white laid paper. Some light dampstaining and smudging on many folios, rarely affecting the legibility of the text. Foliation: European, 405 ff. Dimensions: 214 x 145 mm; 150 x 95 mm. Pricking and Ruling: ff 1-28: 12 lines to the page; from f 282 onwards, 15 lines to the page. Script: ff 1-281 are copied in cursive, fully vocalised nesih with divani elements. From f 282 onwards, the text is in a rık'a hand that is far clearer. Ink: Headings and some Arabic quotations in red; the loops of some letters are also infilled in red. Binding: Recent leather binding: stamped red covers, black spine.

Scope and Content

This volume contains an early Ottoman Turkish version of the famous compilation of notices of Muslim saints composed in Persian by Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (died 618 AH/1221 CE) in 617 AH/1220 CE. It was authored by an anonymous translator in the ninth century AH/fifteenth century CE. The work includes the biographies, legends, and sayings of sixty-three saints from ʿAṭṭār's original work, starting with Ja'far al-Ṣādiq and ending with al-Ḥallāj. The present manuscript lacks the preface and some of the final folios. It thus begins almost at the end of the first entry and ends midway through the final entry. After every few sentences the text is punctuated with the phrase, written in red, 've nakıldır kim.'. As well as the vocabulary and grammar, the orthography of the present manuscript is also of substantial interest, being both unusual and inconsistent; f 1r features didi (with kesre after the first d and ye after the second) and virdi (with kesre after both), as well as the name Sadık split, with Sa on one line and dık on the next. The script between ff 1-281 adds to the interest of the manuscript, consisting of a cursive nesih with divani elements that is often difficult to decipher. There are also some marginal corrections and additions by the copyist. Lacking at the beginning are the flyleaf and preface, which the foliation shows to have comprised 9 ff; the original ff 12-20 are also lost. Further divergences from the original Arabic foliation stem from errors in it, such as the omission of the numbers 90-100: new 78 is old 100, new 79 is old 1001 (sic), 88 is 110, etc. Begins:. elini aldı […] üstine […] karşuna dizin çeküb edeple oturdu ve bütün hasekiler ve vezirler. Ends:. aşk namazın iki rekât namaz dürüst değildir ta kim kanla abdest almayınca nitekim aşk fıkıh içinde buyurur, Salatü'l-aşk la yusahh illa bi's-selam, pes bu kez dilin kesmek. Though undated, this copy is likely from the late 9th century AH/15th century CE.

Access Information

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Related Material

See Or 15758 (I) for an earlier translation in Early Anatolian Turkish. Sinan Paşa's (died 891 AH/1486 CE) Ottoman translation of the Tezkiretü'l-evliya is at Or 9469. A separate early 15th century CE Ottoman translation can be found at Or 11994. There are a number of translations in Chagatai, Old Anatolian Turkish, Early Ottoman Turkish, and Classical Ottoman Turkish. For these, see Reşat Öngören, 'Tezkiretü'l-Evliyâ,' TDVİA (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/tezkiretul-evliya). For a thesis on the Early Anatolian Turkish version, see Orhan Yavuz, 'Ferîdüddin Attar Tezkiretü'l-evliyâ'sının Eski Türkiye Türkçesi ile Tercümesi' (PhD thesis, Ankara, 1988). For the publication of another (different) anonymous fifteenth century early Ottoman translation, see Mahmut Sami Ramazanoğlu, Ferîdüddin Attâr, Tezkiretü'l-evliyâ (İstanbul, 1984). For Sinan Paşa's version, see Emine Gürsoy Naskali, Sinan Paşa, Tezkiretü'l-evliyâ (Ankara, 1987). See also Süleyman Uludağ, Feridüddîn Attâr: Evliya Tezkireleri (İstanbul, 2007).

Bibliography

Mehmed Zâhid Kotku, Feridüddini Attâr'dan Tezkiret-el Evliyâ (İstanbul: Gümüş Neşriyatı, 1959).