Summary View

Country

Germany

City

Berlin

Institution

Berlin Staatsbibliothek Turkish Manuscripts

Shelfmark

3060

Contents

Süheyl ü Nev-Bahār (Ḫoca Mesʿūd)

Author

Ḫoca Mesʿūd

خواجه مسعد

Show other names

Mesʿūd b. Aḥmed

مسعود إبن أحمد

Elvan Çelebi, active 14th century (authorised)

Elvan Çelebi, 14th cent (variant)

Elvan Çelebi, Aşık Paşa zade, active 14th century (variant)

Biographical notes

Although he only refers to himself as Elvān in his work, he is generally referred to as Elvān Çelebī in later Ottoman sources. A shaykh at zāwiya (Dervish convent) in the village named after him lying outside of the town of Mecidözü in the province of Çorum in north-central Anatolia, Elvān Çelebī hailed from an illustrious Sufi family. His father was ʿĀşık Paşa (عشق باشا), author of the well-known early Old Anatolian Turkish mystical mathnawī, the Ġarib-nāme (غريب نامه), and his great grandfather was the Şeyḫ Ilyās(شيخ الياس), who played a principal role in the Baba’i rebellion of 1239 [1239 CE]-1240 [1240 CE]. Elvan Çelebi informs us that he was elected by his father's disciples to succeed as his father's spiritual successor upon his death. Elvan Çelebi is believed to have been born in Kırşehir where his father lived and died, but apparently later established a zāwiya at Mecidözü (the sixteenth-century [1500-1599 CE] Ottoman author Mecdī Mehmed Efendi (مجدي محمد افندي ) dates this at 1326 [1326 CE]). His famous ancestor Şeyḫ Ilyās (T. Şeyḫ Ilyās; also known as Baba Ilyās (بابا الياس) in other sources) was the main disciple of Dede Ġarḳīn (دده غرقين) (or Şeyḫ Ġarḳīn, as he is also referred to in el-Kitābu’l-Menāḳib (الكتاب المناقب)), a Turkmen baba, or shaykh of the Wafā’iyya order. Dede Ġarḳīn is believed to have come to Anatolia with the Khwarazmians fleeing before the Mongols in the 1220 [1220 CE]-1230 [1230 CE]s and settled in the region of Elbistan. Dede Ġarḳīn sent his disciples into Anatolia, and his main disciple Ilyās settled in the region of Amasya at a village named Çat where he established a zāwiya.

Title

Süheyl ü Nev-Bahār

سهيل و نوبهار

Notes

Süheyl ü Nev-Bahār is a mathnawī romance of 5568 couplets in the mutaqārib meter and with 14 ghazals interspersed throughout the narrative. Composed in Old Anatolian Turkish in 1350 [1350 CE], the work relates the love story between the Yemenite prince Süheyl and the Chinese princess Nevbahār. A minstrel of superior talent, Süheyl succeeds in winning the heart of Nevbahār through his singing. Süheyl and Nevbahār express their love and passion via lyrical ghazals. Ḫoca Mesʿūd claims in his text to have composed this work as a translation of a Persian romance yet makes no mention of which work. It has thus been speculated that, although the names of the characters and the story line of the narrative is quite diffrent, Ḫoca Mesʿūd's Süheyl ü Nev-Bahār was inspired by and, to some extent, modeled after Khwājū Kirmānī (خواجوی کرمانی)'s Persian mathnawī, Humāy u Humāyūn (هماي و همايون), a work composed as a nazīra (response) to Niẓāmī's Iskandarnāmah (اسكندرنامه) in 1331 [1331 CE]. The work survives in two manuscript copies. The work place of composition is the Germiyanid realm of Anatolia, centered at Kütahya.

Main language of text

Turkish

Bibliography

Editions

Banguoğlu, Tahsin. Altosmanische Sprachstudien zu Süheyl-ü Nevbahar. Leipzig: A. Pries, 1938.

Dilçin, Cem, ed. Mes‘ūd Bin Aḥmed. Süheyl ü Nev-Bahār: İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük. Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Yayını, 1991.

Mordtmann, J.H.. Suheil und Nevbehār: romantisches Gedicht des Mes‘ūd b. Ahmed. Hannover: Heinz Lafaire, 1925.

Pertsch, W.. Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin. Berlin: A. Asher, 1889.

Süssheim, K.. Suheil und Nevbehār. Romantisches. 1927.

Studies

Bilge, Kilisli Rif’at. "Süheyl ü Nev-bahār’a Dair." Türkiyat Mecmuası. 2 1928: 401-409.

Dankoff, Robert. "The Lyric in the Romance: The Use of Ghazals in Persian and Turkish Masnavīs." Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 43, no. 1 1984: 9-25.

Erkan, Mustafa and Mustafa Özkan. "Hoca Mesud." TDVİA. 18 1998: 189-191.

Tezcan, Semih. Süheyl ü Nev-bahâr Üzerine Notlar. Istanbul: Simurg, 1994.

Tezcan, Semih. "Mes‘ud ve XVI. Yüzyıl Türk Edebiyatı Üzerine Yeni Bilgiler." Türk Dilleri Araştırmaları. 5 1995: 65-84.

Physical Description

Number of folios

189 ff.

Seal

Waqf seal of Bayezid II's library fol. 1 and 189.

History

Date of copy

NaNth. century