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].
Manuscripts by this author
Ḫüsrev ü Şīrīn
Ḫüsrev ü Şīrīn, a mathnawī of 4681 couplets, is the oldest Turkish
translation of Niẓāmī’s classic. It was composed
on 9 Rajab 768 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. Show more
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.
