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 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 1330s, 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. Show more
The work is followed by a short continuation or zeyl (dhayl(ضيل))
on fols. 216v-232r.
