al-Shudhūr al-dhahabīyah wa-al-qiṭʿ al-aḥmadīyah fī al-lughah al-turkīyah - الشذور الذهبية والقطع الاحمدية في اللغة التركية

This volume contains a grammar of the Ottoman Turkish language explained in Arabic by Mawlānā ibn Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ (VIAF ID: 56468910). The author says in the preface that, Ottoman Turkish being the language of the now-ruling Ottoman dynasty, he had been often desired to compose a manual of that idiom. At last, having been led by fate to the threshold of a noble patron, who bore the name of Mensur and combined the offices of Kadı and Kâtıp or Tevkii (Secretary of the Divan), and having been entrusted by him with the tuition of his son, Seydi Ahmet, he wrote the present treatise for the use of his pupil. He had then at hand upwards of thirty lexicographical works, which he enumerates in the text. But none of these works was expressly designed, like the present, for the teaching of the Ottoman Turkish langauge. The author had completed his own when he lighted upon a manual ascribed to Ebu Hayan en-Nahvi (للعلامة ابى حيان النحوى), and entitled al-Durrat al-maḍīyah fī al-lughat al-turkīyah (الدرة المضية في اللغة التركية), but he found that the writer's knowledge of the Turkish language was imperfect, and that, moreover, the Turkish of his day was the Tatar dialect ('Tatari') , now obsolete in the Ottoman Empire, although still spoken in Kaffa (Kefe/Feodosiya) and the Tatar country (Crimea), as the author ascertained when visiting those parts. Ibn Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ lived apparently in Egypt, and probably not earlier than the 11th century AH (17th century CE), certainly after the death of Sultan Süleyman I, who is spoken of as dead on f 5v. The work is divided into a Mukaddime, four rukun, and a Hatime, as follows:. Mukaddime. Letters used in Ottoman Turkish (f 7r);. Rukn I, the Ottoman Turkish verb, in eight ebvap: (I) the infinitive; (II) imperative; (III) prohibitive; (IV) past; (V) present; (VI) name of the agent; (VII) negative; (VIII) plural (f 9r);. Rukn II: A classed vocabulary of nouns (f 33r);. Rukn III: Pronouns, particles and numerals (f 41r);. Rukn IV: Words common to Arabic and Ottoman Turkish;. Hatime. Familiar sentences and dialogues in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish (f 49r). This manuscript was likely copied in the early 19th century CE.

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Acquired by the British Museum from Sir John Malcolm.

For a more detailed catalogue entry see Rieu, Catalogue of the Turkish Manuscripts in the British Museum, p. 150; and Cureton, W. and Rieu, C. Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum orientalium qui in Museo Britannico asservantur. Pars secunda, pars I [b]. London, 1846-71: 1524

Another copy of this text can be found at Or 12906.