Şerh-i Dibaçe-yi Gülistan - شرح دیباجۀ کلستان

This volume contains an Ottoman Turkish commentary on the preface to the Gulistān of Saᶜdī by Mahmud İbn-i Osman İbn-i Ali el-Lami'i (f 3v). Lami'i was a native of Bursa and the son of Osman Çelebi, who had been Defterdar for Sultan Beyazit II. After completing the usual course of studies, he entered the religious order of the Nakşibendiler and spent his whole life in his native city, where he died in 937 AH (1530-31 CE), according to the Tac ut-Tevarih, or in 938 AH (1531-32 CE), as stated by Haj. Khal. He is one of the most productive writers of both prose and verse of his time and was called by his admirers the Cami of Rum. According to Ali (Or 32, f 31), he was entitled to that name rather by the number of his works than by their merit and he was, as a poet, far inferior to his predecessors, Ahi, the author of Hüsnü Dil, and Hamdi, the author of Yusuf u Züleyha. In the best known of his works, Şerefü'l-insan, Lami'i enumerates twenty-four of his previous works in prose and verse. The date of the present work is given in the preface on f 3v. In the Hatime, f 80v, the author again states that the fair copy was completed on 9 Recep 910 AH (16 December 1504 CE), year 1816 of Alexander, 822 of Yazdegirt, and 428 of Melikşah. The date of the present copy is given by the copyist, Mahmud İbn-i Durmuş, as 360 AH, although 960 AH (1553-54 CE) is the most likely of actual dates of completion.

Unrestricted

Acquired from the collection of Hillgrove Turner.

See Rieu, Catalogue of the Turkish Manuscripts in the British Museum, pp. 155-56.

For other copies, see Or 7154 and Or 8600. For more information on the author's other works, please see Kınalızade, Or 35, f 281; GOD II, pp. 20-195; for his letters, see Fleischer, Leipzig Catalogue, pp. 385-86; GOD III, p. 465; and Gibb, Ottoman Poems, p. 189.