Şerefü'l-insan - شرف الانسان.

This volume contains a free translation into Ottoman Turkish of the twenty-first tract in the Arabic text Risāᵓil ikhwān al-ṣafā by Lami'i Çelebi (died 937 or 938 AH/1530-31 CE or 1532-33 CE). In a long and wordy preface (ff 3v-18v), a great part of which is devoted to praise of the reigning Sultan Süleyman I (as is too the epilogue (ff 154r-158v)), the translator states that he wrote the present work in 933 AH (1526-27 CE), when he had reached the age of 55. He gives there (f 14v) his proper name, Mahmud İbn-i Osman İbn-i İlyas. In some of the numerous poetical pieces in both Ottoman Turkish and Persian that he has produced, however, he refers to himself by his mahlas, Lami'i. The manuscript contains a table of contents on f 1v, and was copied by Seyit Ahmet İbn-i Mevlana Seyit Bahşi at the end of Ramazan 989 AH (October 1581 CE).

Unrestricted

Acquired from the collection of Alexandre Jaba.

See Rieu, Catalogue of the Turkish Manuscripts in the British Museum, pp. 226-27.

Other copies of the text can be found in Or 7150, Or 7151 text 1, Or 13194, Or 13473, and Add MS 7843. For more information on the original Arabic text, please see Cureton et al., Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum orientalium qui in Museo Britannico asservantur, p. 662.

The original Arabic work was printed in Kolkata in 1812, and has been re-edited by Dieterici under the title Their und Mensch vor dem König der Genien (Leipzig, 1879-81).