Composed in 802, this is the oldest Persian-Turkish dictionary in existence.
This verse dictionary composed with pedagogical aims in mind consists of 233 rhyming couplets, with a short prose introduction in Persian, and an
additional 16 short verse pieces (qiṭāʿ) in ghazal form interspersed throughout the text. It explains around 1200 Persian words in Turkish.
Ḥüsāmī refers to his patron as a certain
“Devletlü Şāh Orhan Beg,” a figure identified by Yusuf Öz as Ebū’l-Muẓaffer Orhan
Beg ibn Ḳaramān. Ḥüsāmī took as an
example an Arabic-Persian dictionary by Ḥusām al-Dīn Ḥasan ibn ʿAbd al-Muʾmīn’s Nasīb al-Fityān wa Nasībat al-Ṭibyān
نسيب الفتيان و نسيبة الطبيان. Muğlalı İbrāhīm Dede Şāhidī, The author of the well-known Ottoman Turkish-Persian lexicon, the
Tuḥfe-i Şāhīdī, تحفزص شاهيدي, composed his work
as a nazīre of the Tuḥfe-i Ḥüsāmī.
