Dreams and Lives in Ottoman Istanbul

A Seventeenth-Century Biographer's Perspective

Asli Niyazioglu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472472298
• eBook ISBN: 9781317148111
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Dreams and Lives in Ottoman Istanbul explores biography writing and dream narratives in seventeenth-century Istanbul. It focuses on the prominent biographer 'A??'? (d. 1637) and with his help shows how learned circles narrated dreams to assess their position in the Ottoman enterprise. This book demonstrates that dreams provided biographers not only with a means to form learned communities in a politically fragile landscape but also with a medium to debate the correct career paths and social networks in late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Istanbul.

By adopting a comparative approach, this book engages with current scholarly dialogues about life-writing, dreams, and practices of remembrance in Habsburg Spain, Safavid Iran, Mughal India and Ming China. Recent studies have shown the shared rhythms between these contemporaneous dynasties and the Ottomans, and there is now a strong interest in comparative approaches to examining cultural life. This first English-language monograph on Ottoman dreamscapes addresses this interest and introduces a world where dreams changed lives, the dead appeared in broad daylight, and biographers invited their readers to the gardens of remembrance.

1 The biographer between this world and the hereafter

During a stroll along the Bosphorus, Nev‘ī Efendi shared with his son ‘Aṭā’ī his memories of the garden of a deceased friend in Ortaköy, which used to be famous for its literary gatherings. Its owner Fuzayl Efendi (d. 1583 or 1584), as the father recalled, was a devoted patron of literature and wanted to be remembered as such. He presented writing desks crafted by his own hand to his friends as memorabilia. Then, he died suddenly one day in this garden, at a literary gathering under his great tree. His garden was destroyed shortly after his death, but neither the garden nor Fuzayl Efendi were forgotten. Nev‘ī Efendi and ‘Aṭā’ī cherished their memory. The father told the son their story and the son ensured its remembrance by recording it in writing.¹

The Ḥadā’iḳ is not an impartial record of distant figures as often assumed, but selectively recollected lives intimately known by the biographer. In this book, the biographer embraced the special dead among family, patrons, teachers and friends with his writing. Although these ties have been often unnoticed, ‘Aṭā’ī revealed them occasionally by inserting himself into his work. He displayed his relation to his subjects through brief but frequent remarks. He noted, for instance, how he sipped handfuls from the boundless ocean of knowledge of his teacher Feyzullah Efendi (d. 1611 or 1612) or how he opened his ears to collect bucketful of the gems spread during a literary gathering of the poet Bāḳī (d. 1600).² He also presented his subjects as oceans with precious pearls from which he was eager to benefit. When death separated him from them, he wrote how the separation cut a hole in his heart, but through this hole he sang their songs.³

‘Aṭā’ī’s respectful portrait of the deceased and his yearning for some of them should not mislead us into thinking of the early seventeenth-century literary circles solely as a group of affectionate colleagues eager to esteem their dead. This was a world of foes as well as friends, a world of violent deaths awaited eagerly and vicious executions celebrated with great joy. Writing and circulation of couplets played an important role in marking these enmities. A couplet attributed to Fā’iẓi, for example, advocated the execution of Nef‘ī (d. 1635), the satirist. “It is a duty, according to all four schools of law to execute him,” it said, “like killing a poisonous snake.”⁴ Fury seems not to have diminished after some of the executions. Joy for the death was shared publicly through the circulation of chronograms such as “the execution of Yemişci is excellent” by the chief judge Nādirī (d. 1626), who celebrated the death of an enemy.⁵ The historian Peçevi (d. 1649[?]) himself joined these voices of hostility and wrote in his history how he ate the rose jam of an executed enemy, a finance director, who had treated him badly. After the execution, Peçevi was assigned as an inspector to confiscate his property and took with him all the rose jam that the finance director had not offered him when alive.⁶ ‘Aṭā’ī was not an exception; as well as recording some of these remarks about adversaries, he also described in one of his mesnevīs how he danced with joy when he learned about the death of his two enemies among the high-ranking ulema.⁷

In a seminal article, Cemal Kafadar has shown how we need to look at the Ottoman ‘self’ with its connection to the ‘others.’⁸ Since the publication of this article over twenty years ago, we still know very little about the kinds of ties that bound the Ottomans together and how they were remembered through writing. Our neglect for the significance of social ties would have surprised the Ottoman biographers. Unlike our inclination for writing biographies focusing on one subject, Ottoman biographers often chose to portray multiple life stories within their social networks. Not only did they write collected biographies where they displayed each life story with its relation to hundreds of others, but they also emphasized the role of fathers, teachers, Sufi sheikhs, friends and colleagues in each entry. In these works, they oriented the reader from entry to entry with cross-references and thus linked the biographies to each other the way these people were united in life.

Dana Sajdi has recently explored the significance of these social ties for the eighteenth-century Damascene literary circles in an inspiring study. She has examined the chains of authorities that connected the ulema and Sufis across generations and between contemporaries. She has shown how the learned elite used a wide variety of mediums to sustain these chains, such as education certificates, socialization at picnics, and mystical dreams as well as biographical dictionaries. Sajdi argues that “the result of this complex of diachronic and synchronic connections is a relatively closed – or an attempt at a closed – world where ‘in’ and ‘out’ are clearly demarcated by a whole network of chains that bind scholars and limit intruders.”⁹ While the creation of a social body and its defense from outsiders was certainly a crucial function of these connections, Sajdi’s discussion of chains is also helpful for understanding many other social and intellectual concerns of the learned men. Throughout Ottoman history, poets, scholars, and Sufis highlighted their place in selected chains to insert themselves in literary traditions, seek a place among contemporaries, and distinguish their unique role in their particular milieu.

This chapter seeks to understand the place ‘Aṭā’ī sought for himself among his literary circles within the ties of family, patronage and sheikh–disciple relationships. Like many of his colleagues, ‘Aṭā’ī was engaged in literary pursuits to advance his social position in a competitive world. He claimed a place for himself as the “poet-son-of-a-poet” and searched for support from his father’s circles. This was a difficult search. Early seventeenth-century Ottoman politics were perilous. Dismissals and executions often severed the ties between a patron and a poet. ‘Aṭā’ī, however, was keen in preserving such delicate ties. Especially after the death of his friend Fā’iẓi, he called attention to the persistence of bonds beyond death. He highlighted the role of the deceased Ottoman learned men in his literary pursuits and presented himself as a custodian of their memory.

This chapter is organized around three figures whose support ‘Aṭā’ī singled out in the introductory sections of his three mesnevīs. Rather than ignoring these passages for being common topoi as is often done, I ask why these particular men – his father Nev‘ī Efendi, patron Fā’iẓi and Sufi sheikh ‘Uryānī Mehmed Dede – were important for ‘Aṭā’ī. I take these relationships as starting points to discuss the ways ‘Aṭā’ī sought, established and concealed his ties to delicate social networks. Because ‘Aṭā’ī often shared his views through images and stories, I explore their complex uses, especially the recurrent theme of gardens, the dead and dreams. Two of the three men were dead and helped ‘Aṭā’ī through dreams, and thus the chapter revolves around ‘Aṭā’ī’s otherworldly ties and explores how he situated himself as a writer between this world and the hereafter.

But first let us briefly look at our main source for this chapter, ‘the reason-for-composition’ (sebeb-i te’līf) passages of the Ottoman mesnevīs. These passages take us to literary gatherings among friends...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Transliteration and Manuscripts
• Introduction
• 1 The biographer between this world and the hereafter
• 2 Collection of lives as a well-ordered garden
• 3 From this world to the realm of dreams
• 4 The dead and visits from the hereafter
• Epilogue
• Appendix: Sample biographical notice
• Bibliography
• Index