Poetry
Garibnâme
Not translated into English
Âşık Pasha · 1330
Synopsis
A long didactic and mystical poem in couplets, divided into ten chapters of ten sections, in which each chapter deals with subjects linked to its ordinal number: the fifth, according to Britannica, is about the number five. According to the Diyanet encyclopedia, the author draws there on verses of the Qur'an, hadiths and the moral and mystical counsels of various Sufi works, to instruct the people in a simple language; turkedebiyati.org adds that he sets out there the ideal of the perfect man.
Context
The poem was completed in 1330 and comprises about twelve thousand couplets according to the Diyanet and turkedebiyati.org, more than eleven thousand according to Britannica, in a single metre of quantitative prosody. Turkedebiyati.org sees in it the first great original mesnevi of Turkish literature and cites the line in which the author wishes to find “new meanings in the Turkish language”. Its simple language won it readers for centuries, and numerous manuscripts survive, the oldest of them in Istanbul. The official site of Turkish culture notes its influence on Süleyman Çelebi.
Who it is for
Twelve thousand couplets in Old Anatolian Turkish, with no French translation; a Turkish facsimile edition with transcription exists.
Prizes and reception
Britannica counts it among the best masnavis of its time, and the Küre encyclopedia among the most influential Sufi works of Anatolia.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.