Summary View

Country

Germany

City

Berlin

Institution

Berlin Staatsbibliothek Turkish Manuscripts

Collection

Hs_or_quart

Shelfmark

no. 1069

Contents

Ḫüsrev ü Şīrīn (Faḫrüddin Yaʿḳūb b. Muḥammed)

Author

Faḫrüddin Yaʿḳūb b. Muḥammed

فخرالدين يعقوب بن محمّد

Show other names

Faḫrī

Faḫrüddin Yaʿḳūb b. Muḥammed (authorised)

(variant)

Biographical notes

Little is known of the author, Faḫrüddin Yaʿḳūb b. Muḥammad Faḫrī, other than that he was a poet in the Aydınid ruler’s entourage. He most likely was a Turkmen from the Aydınid region, born sometime before 717 AH [1318 CE].

Title

Ḫüsrev ü Şīrīn

خسرووشيرين

Notes

Ḫüsrev ü Şīrīn, a mathnawī of 4681 couplets, is the oldest Turkish translation of Niẓāmī’s classic. It was composed on 9 Rajab 768 [1367-03-12 CE] for the Aydınıd ruler, Faḫreddīn ʿİsā Beg (r. ca. 760s-789/1360s-1390). ʿİsā Beg, as Faḫrī tells us, took such pleasure in the poet’s recitation of Niẓāmī’s original Persian work at a majlis that he requested him to translate it into Turkish. Faḫrī’s translation for the most part follows Niẓāmī’s story of the Sasanian ruler, Khusraw Parwīz, and his tortuous love affair with the Armenian princess, Shīrīn: Ḫüsrev (Khusraw Parwīz), the son of the shāh of Iran, takes refuge with the Byzantine ruler of Rūm when his father loses his throne to one of his generals. While in Rūm, Ḫüsrev falls in love with Şīrīn (Shīrīn), the daughter of the Armenian king’s brother. The narrative pivots around the themes of usurpation and political and romantic betrayal. Despite Şīrīn’s attempts to transform the misguided Khusraw from being a capricious and whimsical monarch into one befitting the Iranian ideal of kingship, Ḫüsrev does not reform until the end, when he dies in his beloved Şīrīn’s arms. The work survives in a single manuscript in Berlin.

The place of composition is Aydınid realm of western Anatolia.

The manuscript has illuminated borders; its headers are alternatively in blue, gold, and red; on 42 pages there are recessed spaces for miniatures, none of which were carried out.

The manuscript, which has suffered worm damage, has been crudely restored; it has laid paper with no detectable watermark; many of the folios have been rebound in the wrong order, and there are missing sheets.

Main language of text

Turkish

Bibliography

Editions

Flemming, Barbara. Faḫrīs Ḫusrev u Šīrīn. Eine türkishce Dichtung von 1367. Weisbaden: F. Seinder, 1974.

Studies

Flemming, Barbara. "Faḫrī’s Ḫusrev u Šīrīn vom Jahre 1367. Eine vergessene türkische Dichtung aus der Emiratszeit." ZDMG. 115 1965: 36-64.

Flemming, Barbara. "Beylikler Devrimin Bir Romantik Mesnevisi: Fahrî’nin Husrev u Şîrîn’i." Istanbul: 1979: 327-340.

Flemming, Barbara. "Old Anatolian Turkish Poetry in its relationship to the Persian tradition." In Turkic-Iranian Contact Areas. Historical and Linguistic Aspects. Johanson, Lars and Christiane Bulut, ed. Weisbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006, 49-68.

Güneş, Özlem. "Fahri’nin Husrev u Şirin’i (Metin ve Tahlil), Nizâmî ve Şeyhî’nin Eserleriyle Karşılaştırılması." Ph.D. Dissertation, İstanbul Üniversitesi, 2010.

Physical Description

Number of folios

168 ff.

Dimensions of folio

width 16.0cm, height 25.0cm

Dimensions of written area

width 13.0cm, height 19.5cm

History

Date of copy

Early 16th century but possibly much earlier