![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
Scholars have generally recognized the Ottoman poet Nefʿī (d. 1635) for his refinement of the panegyric in Turkish and his skill in its unflattering twin, the invective. They have thus paid little attention to the fact that he composed poems in Persian, and sufficient to compile a collection of them, simply viewing his output as a byproduct of his taste for the fresh style emanating from the East, particularly India, with no consideration of other factors at play. The article addresses this contextual gap by situating Nefʿī’s engagement with the fresh style in relation to wider efforts at poetic renewal and also to literati disputes about the extent to which the fresh style and other currents from the East ought to be adopted and assimilated, in which differing formal and generic preferences, as well as linguistic and rhetorical concerns, were central. The article ultimately suggests that Nefʿī’s overall work should be seen as part of those wider efforts that also aimed at making Ottoman practice distinctively fresh.
Notes
1 Nefʿī, Farsça Divan (2000), 55.
2 Moayyad, “The Persian Poetry,” 536.
3 Ibid., 537.
4 Nefʿī, Fārsça Dīvān, MS Yazma Bağışlar 563.
5 Atalay recently reissued his edition of Nefʿī’s Persian divan (2019) with a Turkish translation in prose.
6 See, for example, Atalay, “Nef‘î ve Sınır Ötesine”; Kanar, “Nef’i’nin Tuhfetü’l-uşşak Adlı Kasidesi.”
7 See, for example, Ocak, “XVII. Yüzyıl Şâiri Nef’i”; Andrews and Kalpaklı, “The Kaside.”
8 İnan, “Rethinking the Ottoman Imitation,” 673.
9 On the importance of competence in Persian (and in Arabic) at the time, see Kim, The Last of Age, 116–27.
10 Kuru, “The Literature of Rum,” 2:583.
11 İnan, “Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations,” 85. More specifically on Sūdī’s commentary, see İnan, “Crossing Interpretive Boundaries.”
12 Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, 3:247.
13 Feldman, “The Indian Style,” 32–3.
14 Feldman, “The Celestial Sphere,” 200.
15 Bilkan and Aydın, Sebk-i Hindî, 140.
16 Erkal, Divan Şiiri Poetikası, 136.
17 Sheridan, “‘I Curse No One without Cause,’” 55.
18 Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, 44.
19 Aksoyak, “Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî’nin,” 330–33. Aksoyak provides the preface in both Arabic script and Latin transliteration.
20 As a rule, scholars have identified Nefʿī’s previous pen name as the “harmful” Żarrī. But Sheridan has convincingly argued that the old name must have been something else and not the too convenient Żarrī (Sheridan, “‘I Curse No One without Cause,’” 58, n. 102).
21 Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, 142.
22 Sheridan, “‘I Curse No One without Cause,’” 59.
23 Nefʿī, Farsça Divan (2000), 14–33.
24 Losensky, Welcoming Fighānī, 9.
25 ʿUrfī, Kulliyyāt, 1:232.
26 Nefʿī, Farsça Divan (2019), 55–6.
27 Kinra, Writing Self, Writing Empire, 212.
28 ʿUrfī, Kulliyyāt, 2:185.
29 Nefʿī, Farsça Divan (2019), 7–8.
30 Ocak, “XVII. Yüzyıl Şâiri Nef’i,” 64.
31 Demirel, The Poet Fuzûli, 137–38.
32 Fużūlī, Farsça Divan, 17.
33 Nefʿī also composed five qaṣīdas in praise of Rūmī, four in Persian.
34 Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Hz. Mevlânâ’nın Rubaileri, no. 1502.
35 Nefʿī, Farsça Divan (2019), 82.
36 Ibid., 46–8. Cf. Muḥtasham, Dīvān, 152; Vaḥshī, Dīvān, 187–91.
37 Nefʿī, Farsça Divan (2019), 38–41. Cf. ʿUrfī, Kulliyyāt, 2:65–71.
38 Nefʿī, Farsça Divan (2019), 15. ʿUrfī would not have completely disagreed with the criticism, since he viewed the composition of panegyrics for patronage as an imposed task, stating in a verse: “[It] is a composition for the greedily ambitious.” Quoted in Shackle, “Settings of Panegyric,” 1:208–9.
39 Nefʿī, Farsça Divan (2019), 40.
40 Nefʿī, Farsça Divan (2019), 61.
41 Riyāżī, Riyâzü’ş-Şuarâ (2017), 319.
42 Ocak, “Ölümünün 350. Yılında Nef’i,” 12.
43 Nefʿī, Siḥām-ı ḳażāʾ, MS Yazma Bağışlar 7274, fol. 19a. Cf. Sihām-ı Kazā (2018), 105.
44 Nefʿī, Siḥām-ı ḳażāʾ, MS TY 511, fol. 92a.
45 Ibid.
46 Açıkgöz, “Riyâzî’nın Düstûrü’l-ʿAmel’i,” 6.
47 Nefʿī, Siḥām-ı ḳażāʾ, MS TY 511, fol. 92a. In fact, Riyāżī accuses ʿĀlī of being a pederast, of being a kūn-bāz, “ass-player.”
48 The earliest extant of copy of the Turkish divan (MS Laleli 1771) dates from 1620.
49 Ḳāf-zāde Fāʾiżī, Zübdet ül-eşʿār, MS Şehid Ali Paşa 1877, fol. 100b.
50 Karahan, Nef’i, 16.
51 Okatan, “Kafzâde Fâ’izî,” 6.
52 Nefʿī, Siḥām-ı ḳażāʾ, MS Yazma Bağışlar 7274, fol. 16b. Cf. Sihām-ı Kazā (2018), 95.
53 Ocak, “Ölümünün 350. Yılında Nef’i,” 6.
54 The couplet is recorded in Naʿīmā, Tārīḫ, 3:236.
55 Nefʿī, Siḥām-ı ḳażāʾ, MS TY 511, fol. 92a.
56 Nefʿī did compose invectives in Persian, mainly targeting Vaḥdetī, a little-known poet from Baghdad.
57 Nefʿī, Siḥām-ı ḳażāʾ, MS TY 511, fol. 89a. In the manuscript, the invective is misattributed to another rival poet, Nevʿī-zāde ʿAtāʾī.
58 Losensky, “Poetics and Eros,” 749.
59 Ocak, “Nef‘ī Konusunda Yeni İki Belge,” 129.
60 Nefʿī, Siḥām-ı ḳażāʾ, MS Yazma Bağışlar 7274, fol. 8b. Cf. Sihām-ı Kazā (2018), 65.
61 Riyāżī, Riyâż uş-şuʿarâʾ, MS Ali Emiri Tarih 765, fol. 2b. Cf. Riyâzü’ş-Şuarâ (2017), 21; Qazvīnī, Taẕkira-i maykhāna, 306–7.
62 Losensky, “Ẓohuri Toršizi.” On the development of the genre in Persian, see Losensky, “Sāqi-nāma;” Sharma, “Hāfiz’s Sāqīnamah.”
63 On the development of the Ottoman genre, see Canım, Türk Edebiyatında Sâkînâmeler, 42–7.
64 Niyazioğlu, “The Very Special Dead,” 230.
65 See Nefʿī, Farsça Divan (2019), 50–54. Cf. Qazvīnī, Taẕkira-i maykhāna, 155–62, 324–31.
66 See Nefʿī, Nefi Divanı, muṣammet no. 3.
67 Nevʿī-zāde ʿAṭāʾī, Ḥadāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq, 740.
68 Nevʿī-zāde ʿAṭāʾī, Sâkīnâme, 204. Like Niẓāmī, ʿAṭāʾī produced a khamsa or quintet of mas̱navīs.
69 Nefʿī, Siḥām-ı ḳażāʾ, MS Yazma Bağışlar 7274, fol. 10b. Cf. Sihām-ı Kazā (2018), 72.
70 Nefʿī, Siḥām-ı ḳażāʾ, MS Yazma Bağışlar 7274, fol. 11a. Cf. Sihām-ı Kazā (2018), 74.
71 Nefʿī, Siḥām-ı ḳażāʾ, MS Yazma Bağışlar 7274, fol. 15b. Cf. Sihām-ı Kazā (2018), 91.
72 Riyāżī, Riyâż uş-şuʿarâʾ, MS Ali Emiri Tarih 765, fol. 3b. Cf. Riyâzü’ş-Şuarâ (2017), 22–3. For a further discussion of the relevant couplet, see Kim, The Last of An Age, 138–9.
73 See Ibn Ḥijja al-Ḥamawī, Khizānat al-adab, 210.
74 Riyāżī, Riyâż uş-şuʿarâʾ, MS Ali Emiri Tarih 765, fol. 3a. Cf. Riyâzü’ş-Şuarâ (2017), 22.
75 Aynur, “Ottoman Literature,” 3:483.
76 Sheridan, “‘I Curse No One without Cause,’” 68.
77 On the Miftāḥ ul-belāġa, see Ferrard, “Development of an Ottoman Rhetoric.”
78 Nefʿī, Nefi Divanı, ḳaṣīde no. 33.
79 As Julie Meisami has noted, “poetry and the poetic use of language was the standard to which oratory was likened,” the opposite of the classical Aristotelian formulation (Meisami, Structure and Meaning, 445–6).
80 Rıżā Meḥmed, Rızâ Tezkiresi, 205.
81 Ocak, “XVII. Yüzyıl Şâiri Nef’i ve Kaside,” 66. On the particular techniques Nefʿī adopted, see Erkal, Divan Şiiri Poetikası, 170–74.
82 Feldman, “Imitatio in Ottoman Poetry,” 45–6.
83 Erkal, Divan Şiiri Poetikası, 151.
84 Kinra, Writing Self, Writing Empire, 224.