Speaker: Derin Terzioğlu

This lecture aims to contextualize a particular corpus of political advice works that flourished in the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire and that exhibited the following three traits. Firstly, the texts in question were all written in simple Turkish, versified, and addressed to multiple constituencies, including the sultan and grandees, rank-and-file soldiers and seamen, and the Muslim community at large. Secondly, they all articulated a sharp critique of the Ottoman ruling establishment of their time, on religio-moral grounds, and frequently, in apocalyptic terms. Thirdly, they made use of some of the same tropes, turns of expression and sometimes even complete verses, indicating a high level of intertextuality as well as indebtedness to a larger realm of oral political discourse.

This lecture will not only highlight the shared features of this corpus but also unpack and analyze the distinctive utterances of identifiable authors in their specific contexts. Through a study of the dissemination and manuscript variants of several of the more popular versified nasihatnames, it will further show how their messages were altered as they were picked up by other interlocutors in other social and political contexts. Finally, this discussion will reveal the vital roles played by soldiers, sufis and preachers in disseminating and in diverse ways and to diverse ends, harnessing a discourse of critique and protest across the Ottoman lands.