نامه فرهنگستان
سال پانزدهم شماره 4 (پاییز و زمستان 1395)

The present paper is written on the occasion of the Turk hardworking historiographer, Halil Inalçık’s decease at the age of one hundred on Mordad 4, 1395. After reviewing his biography from his childhood up to the time when he joined the Faculty of Language, History and Geography of the University of Ankara, Turkish and foreign Foundations of Historiography, his valuable works on the Ottoman history, especially based on the archival documents of Turkey and abroad, particularly England: British Museum, the U.K. Archive, The school of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) have been studied. In addition to introducing the nature of some of the archival documents and the archives were consulted by him which were the inspiration source of his works. Some of the Turkish and European researchers of the Ottoman history such as Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı, Mehmet Fuad Köprülü, Ahmet Zeki Velidi Togan, Ahmet Refik, Osman Turan, Paul Wittek, Franz Babinger, Bernard Lewis have been introduced.
The current study covers a time period extends till the early years of Ināljiq teaching, its second part demonstrates ups and downs of his progress process towards the high position of a ‘world historian’ and ‘Şeyhu’l-Muvarrihin’.

The cultural ties between Iran and modern Turkey have long lasting historical roots, apart from the ancient relations associated with the old history, from the Seljuks onward, the ties between this strong culture have become so intense that in some historical time period we can hardly draw a sharp line between the cultural borders of the two countries. One of the most outstanding ties is manifested in literary relationships between Iran and Turkey. Through examining the literary ties and relationships between the two nations we can divide it into two time periods: premodern (the Seljuks and the Ottoman empire periods) and post-modern (the periods of Tanzimat/Transition, the Constitutionalism and the Turkish Republic).
The present paper, in addition to pointing out the history of the cultural and literary relationships between Iran and Turkey and the prevalent of Persian language and literature during pre-modern era and its impact on the Turkish court literature of this time period, known as Divan poetry, attempts to study the literary relation of the two countries during the Tanzimat period, especially during both the Ottoman and Iran Constitutionalism, The presupposition of the present paper is that since the Ottoman Constitutionalism the influential process has been reversed, as a result Persian literature, especially Persian poetry has been affected by the Turkish modern literature.
The author, by citing some evidences, has tried to explain the process of this impact.

Majâlis-é Sab‘a (lit., “seven sessions”), commonly known as his “sermons” is one of Mawlânâ’s three prose works (two others: Fihe Mâ Fih (lit., “in it what is in it”) and Maktubât (his “letters”) and Mawlânâ’s only surviving work prior to his spiritual transformation period during which his only concern was substituting his father and satisfying his great number of followers. Of course, these sessions were so interesting that provided the ground for Mawlânâ’s spiritual transformation which led to Shams-e Tabrizi’s favourite.
Mawlânâ’s poetic testimonies, within this collection, proves that he studied Divans poetry and enjoyed that poetic taste which was being used for increasing the effects of his words. Most of them belong to Sana’i whose influence on Mawlânâ’s later works is also obvious and noticeable. In this collection, there are some lyrics of Shams which were possibly added by the copyists of the later periods during copying the original text. Dr. Tofigh Sobhani in his correction and annotation on Majâlis has attained and introduced more resources of testimonies. The present paper is an attempt to regain and introduce these resources he failed to identify. In fact, this work is a supplement of Dr. Sobhani’s annotations in introducing the resources of the poetic testimonies of Mawlânâ’s Majâlis.

Prosody is one of the technical discussions in literature, including Persian literature. Various books have been written on this area during the course of centuries, some of which are famous and some others are less known. Among them an edition of a work may be found that has remained unknown for centuries. These kinds of works generally reveal major part of the history of our culture and literature. One example of such works is ‘Šâfiye fi Ma‘refat al-‘Aruz va al-Qâfiye’ which was compiled in the 9th century (AH) in Ottoman territory. This book is in Arabic, but on Persian prosody and the entire extant evidences have been selected from the lexicons, hemistiches and poems of Persian composers. The current study first explores the author’s identity, then describes both general and particular characteristics of the work as well as investigates its place in the history of Persian literature. Thereafter, introduces in detail the unique edition of the work which has been briefly introduced in the list of manuscripts of Nurusmaniye library together with its pictures.

Selk al-Jawâher of ‘Abd al-Hamid is a versified encyclopaedia (ArabicPersian) which was composed in 575 AH in imitation of Nesâb al-Sebyân by Abu Nasr Farâhi and Nasib al-Fetyân by Hesâm al-Din Ḵo’i. This encyclopaedia contains a brief preface and 35 passages/pieces which each piece has been composed in a specific rhythm. The number of the couplets in this work is 550 in total which together with 35 summarized couplets and added couplets become 590 couplets altogether. The current study has been carried out through application of documents, library facilities and content analysis method. By studying various hand-written versions of this work nearly 24 manuscripts of the Selk al-Jawâher have been recognized in the libraries of Iran and the libraries all around the world. The present paper first attempts to introduce the author and his works. In the second section, 24 manuscripts are identified and in the third section, 8 manuscripts with which the author has been consulted in editing the work are presented. Eventually, the content analysis of Selk al-Jawâher and its stylistic characteristics are dealt with. Lack of an accurate and reliable edition of the foresaid work is the main reason for doing this study and introducing the manuscripts which can be used as reference resources in a scholarly correction is the finding of the current paper.

Iran and Asia Minor, due to their adjacency, has long had a great deal of cultural exchanges with each other. Through examining the literary works of these cultural effects, The Dede Korkut Stories are placed in the realm of the Turkish folk literature with epic and heroic themes which includes twelve stories. Each story has a main hero, but all characters and adventures are related to each other and Dede Korkut, narrator of all the stories, as head of the nation, sometimes plays the role of a mediate and guide in the course of events. According to the author, some epic and heroic motifs of Dede Korkut stories have great similarities with the themes of the heroic period in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. These similarities are comparable in two levels: “ancient patterns” and “common motifs”. The old patterns such as hero’s trip, filicide, and testing children and suitors, and common motifs such as naming children, the unwilling battle between father and son and ruyin–tani (invulnerability) and some negligible cases have been reflected in these two valuable works and have been studied in the present paper. The behaviours of some renowned characters of the Shahnameh have also been compared with the heroes of Dede Korkut Stories which indicates the cultural ties between these two nations and the common origin of some mythical elements in folk stories and epic literature of Iran and Turkey.

After the advent of Islam in Saudi Arabia peninsula and its expansion outside the borders of the Subcontinent, The Arab armies captured Iran for the first time and following the Qâdesiyeh war in 636 AH, Iran came under the control of the Arabs. From then onwards, the Arabs took over the north part of Iran and in the 7th century AD, they encountered the Turks. The Turks did not immediately accept the new religion and culture, but as the time passing, they became submissive and in the 11th century AD, the majority of the Central Asia people converted to Islam. From the 11th century onward, a number of schools were established in Khorasan and Transoxiana and in these schools the holy Qurân and Hadith and other Islamic sciences were taught in Arabic language. After the acceptance of Islam by the Turks, Turkish intellectuals learned Arabic sciences in the schools, and on the other hand, they attempted to learn the works compiled in Persian. The simplicity of learning Persian language in comparison with the Arabic language caused, in the light of the Islamic culture, a number of works to be produced that were under the influence of the Persian language and in Central Asia, modern literature came about and some religious and epic works were created. Despite the attractiveness of these works, they emerged in the form of fiction and heroic story among them Saltuk Boqrâkhân’s Merit and Mânâs Narrative which explain the story of the first Muslim heroes, is worthy of note. The present paper deals with the emergence of the Turkish Islamic literature and its first representatives and their surviving works as well.