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Country

UK

City

Oxford

Institution

Bodleian Library

Collection

Marsh

Shelfmark

180

Contents

Kelīle ve Dimne (Ḳul Mesʿūd b. Aḥmed)

Author

Ḳul Mesʿūd b. Aḥmed

قول مسعود ابن احمد

Show other names

Mesʿūd b. Aḥmed

Masʿūd b. Aḥmad

قول مسعود

مسعود ابن احمد

Ḳul Mesʿūd b. Aḥmed, fl. 14th century (authorised)

قول مسعود ابن احمد (variant)

Biographical notes

Nothing is known about the author’s life. Although Johannes H. Mordtmann first identified Mesʿūd b. Aḥmed as the same individual as Ḫoca Mesʿūd (خواجه مسعود), the author of Süheyl ü Nevbahār (سهيل و نوبهار), this has been disputed and discounted by Kilisli Rifat and M. F. Köprülü, and the prevailing Turkish scholarship does not accept this identification.

Title

Kelīle ve Dimne

كلىلة و دمنة

Notes

This mathnawī is the oldest Old Anatolian Turkish version of the Kalīla wa Dimna (كلىلة و دمنة). An entertaining collection of moralising animal fables illustrating the art of governance, Kalīla wa Dimna, also known as the Fables of Biqpai, was originally composed in Middle Persian, or Pahlawi by for Sasanian ruler Khusraw Anushirwan (531-579) by court physician Burzōe, who drew on the Sanskrit work Panjatantra as his main source. This Turkish version of these animal fables is based on the Abū’l-Maʿālī Naṣrullāh (ابو الماعلي نصرالله)'s Persian prose reworking of the fables which he composed in the twelfth century [1100-1199 CE] for the Ghaznavid ruler Bahrām Shāh (r. 1117-1157) (بهرام شاه) based on Ibn Muqaffā (ابن مقفّى)'s Arabic translation of the Middle Persian version. Mesʿūd b. Aḥmed composed the work upon request of Aydınid prince, Umūr Bey (Beg) (امور بك), most likely sometime in the early 1330 [1330 CE]s, while his father, the Aydinid ruler Meḥmed Bey (d. 1334) (محمد بك) was still alive. The work consists of 16 chapters (bāb), and incorporates verse in both Turkish (Türkī (تركي)), Arabic (Tāzī (تازي)) and Persian (Farsī (فارسي)), some of which appears to have been taken from the original Persian model (such as a ghazal composed in the name of Bahrām Shāh). The work place of composition is Anatolia.

Main language of text

Turkish

Bibliography

Editions

Zajaczkowski, A.. Études sur la langue vieille-osmanlie, 1. Morceaux choicis de la traduction turque-anatolienne de Calila et Dimna. Cracow: 1934.

Studies

Brockelmann, C.. "Kelila ve Dimne." İslam Ansiklopedisi. 6 1967: 552-558.-552-558..

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

Toska, Zehra. "Türk edebiyatında Kelile ve Dimne çevirileri ve Kul Mesud çevirisi." Ph.D. Dissertation, İstanbul Üniversitesi, 1989.

Toska, Zehra. "Kelile ve Dimne’nin Türkçe Çevirileri." Journal of Turkish Studies=Türklü Bilgisi Araştırmaları Fahir İz Armağanı II. 15 1991: 355-380.

Show filiations

Süleymaniye Yazma Eserler Kütüphanesi 1897

Physical Description

Number of folios

xx ff.

History

Date of copy

20th. century