[Garibname]

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

  • Reference
    • GB 59 Or 14571
  • Dates of Creation
    • 848
  • Name of Creator
  • Language of Material
    • Turkish
  • Physical Description
    • 1 text 361 ff Material: Good, thick cream-coloured laid paper; edges trimmed. Foliation: European, 361 ff. Dimensions: 266 x 163 mm; text area 178 x 118 mm. Pricking and Ruling: 15 lines in double columns; catchwords. Headings and quotations in red, written carelessly in a cursive hand more akin to rıka than nesih. Text frames in red. Script: Nesih, fully vocalized. Binding: Most of the red morocco binding appears to be the original, with Seljuk-style blind central ornamentation 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. Dating to 848 AH/1444-5 CE, the present manuscript is one of the earliest recorded copies. Perhaps only a copy in Berlin from 840 AH (1436-7 CE) is older. Aother copy in Paris also dates to 848 AH, while the British Library's Or 14383 dates to 850 AH/1446 CE. The manuscript is at present in disorder, with many folios having been placed out of sequence when it was rebound by a former owner. The colophon on f 361v states that the copy was executed by Mustafa ibn el-merhum el-mağfur Abdullah in 848 AH/1444-5 CE.

Access Information

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Related Material

Other copies of the Garibname in the British Library can be found at Or 14383, Harley MS 5511, and Add MS 7932. See Rieu, Catalogue of the 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).