Poetry
Çeng-nâme
Not translated into English
Ahmed-i Dâi · 1406
Synopsis
An allegorical and mystical poem of 1,446 couplets, in twenty-four sections, as many as the strings of the instrument according to the Islamisation of Anatolia database, which follows the adventures of a harp, the çeng. According to turkedebiyati.org, it comprises a main story and four short tales, and recounts what the instrument has lived through, how it is made, who plays it and what its musical qualities are. It is not known whether the çeng speaks itself.
Context
The poem was written in 808 of the Hegira, that is 1405 or 1406, and offered to the emir Süleyman in his literary circle at Edirne, according to turkedebiyati.org. It follows a single metre of quantitative prosody. Three manuscripts are known, in Burdur, in the Koyunoğlu collection in Konya and in Sivas, the latter never yet examined according to the Diyanet. Gönül Alpay Tekin published the facsimile of the Koyunoğlu copy, then an edition published at Harvard in 1992 with Şinasi Tekin.
Who it is for
An allegorical poem in Old Anatolian Turkish, with no French translation; a scholarly edition gives the text.
Prizes and reception
A poem long misunderstood, taken for a war narrative before its allegory was read, according to the Diyanet's Encyclopedia of Islam and the Küre encyclopedia.
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