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TURKEY (LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE). 



Serpent employed Arabic in paradise to seduce our 

 general mother; Adam and Eve discoursed of love 

 in PerMiin ; tin- angel spoke Turkish when he was 

 compelled to drive our first parents from paradise. 

 The Turkish language is very regular in its gram- 

 matical construction, lint, in itself, is poor in words. 

 The Turks, therefore, to supply its deficiencies, 

 have adopted all the stores of the Arabic and Per- 

 sian ; and these have become so united with it, that 

 a good knowledge of Turkish cannot be acquired 

 without a knowledge of Arabic and Persian. By the 

 mixture of three so completely dissimilar languages, 

 the learning of Turkish becomes very difficult; 

 for words and phrases from all are intermingled, 

 without any change, as well in common life as in 

 writing. The Turks use the Arabic characters, 

 with some small alterations, and write, after the 

 manner of the Jews and Arabians, from right to 

 left. Their paper they receive principally from 

 Venice, but polish it highly before using it. Their 

 pens are made of fine reeds, and their ink is like 

 our printer's ink. They write upon their knees, or, 

 at the most, use a piece of pasteboard for a support. 

 The vowels, which consist of little straight or 

 crooked strokes, and are placed, some above, some 

 below, the consonants, are, excepting in the Koran, 

 seldom written. The difficulty of reading is in- 

 creased by the many dissimilar alphabets and char- 

 acters which are employed in writing: one alphabet 

 is used in the official papers of the government, 

 another in letters, another in the courts, another 

 in literary productions, another in accounts, &c. A 

 person who can read one of them easily, may not be 

 able to read a word of another. Like the French 

 in Europe, the Turkish is, in a great part of Asia, 

 and on the northern coast of Africa, the common 

 medium of communication between nations speaking 

 different languages. After the Turks had received 

 a written character with the Koran of Mohammed, 

 and, at the commencement of the fourteenth cen- 

 tury, under one of their emirs, Osman, had founded 

 an independent empire upon the ruins of the Greek, 

 they began gradually to feel the necessity of more 

 literary cultivation. Even sultan Orkan, the suc- 

 cessor of Osman, although devoted to war and con- 

 quest, founded, in 1336, at Brussa, in Natolia, a 

 literary institution, which became so celebrated for 

 the learning of the teachers, that even Arabs and 

 Persians were not ashamed to become scholars of 

 the Turks. Their own historians remark that the 

 monarchs of this house, until the time of Achmet I. 

 (1603), although not all equally distinguished by 

 glorious undertakings and princely virtues, yet all 

 gave lustre to their reigns, by their love and en- 

 couragement of learning. The golden age of Tur- 

 kish literature was in the second half of the fif- 

 teenth century, during the government of Soliman, 

 who was called the lawgiver, the great-grandson of 

 Mohammed II., whose victories put an end to the 

 Roman empire. In the Turkish schools and higher 

 literary establishments which are usually connected 

 with the mosques, and whose number amounts in 

 Constantinople to several hundreds, the principal 

 branches taught are the Arabic, grammar, logic, 

 rhetoric, dialectics, according to manuals which 

 were written by the Arabians in the middle ages. 

 In general, the Arabs of what we call the middle 

 ages, continue to be the teachers of the Turks in phi- 

 losophy, mathematics, physics, medicine, law, and 

 theology. Treatises on astrology, the interpreta- 

 tion of dreams, and all the modes of predicting fu- 

 ture events, form no inconsiderable part of Turkish 



literature, and are continually studied. Astrology, 

 in particular, holds the rank of a science among the 

 Turks, and has also an important influence upon 

 all affairs of state and private concerns. The 

 munedschim baschi (superior or court astrologer) is 

 one of the most important court officers, since 1 lie- 

 time of the most important transactions is deter- 

 mined by him. The calendar is likewise prepared 

 under his superintendence. But the instrument 

 essential to investigations in natural science are, in 

 Turkey, either entirely unknown, or used only in 

 childish jugglery, to excite the astonishment of the 

 ignorant. The telescope, the magnifying glass, the 

 electrical machine, and all similar aids to the study 

 of nature, the Turks do not know how to use to 

 advantage. They do not even generally employ 

 the compass in their sea voyages. Hence naviga- 

 tion, astronomy, geography, agriculture, chemistry, 

 and other sciences which have received an entirely 

 new form by the discoveries of the moderns, must 

 be in a very low state among the Turks. They 

 are fond of history, but their historical works are 

 written, for the most part, either in a dry chronolo- 

 gical method, or in a bombastic style, half poetry, 

 half prose, and overloaded with figures. One of 

 their oldest and most esteemed annalists is Sand- 

 ed-din, who, after having been the instructor and 

 tutor of two sultans, died in the office of mufti at 

 Constantinople, in 1599. His chronicle is entitled 

 Tadsch-et-tawarich (that is, the Crown of Annals), 

 and extends from the origin of the Turks to the 

 death of Selim I., in 1520, and is regarded by the 

 Turks as a classical work. It has been translated 

 by Leunclavius into Latin, by Bratuti into Italian, 

 and by Podesta into German and Latin. In tlie 

 works of Naima, Raschid and Tchelebisade, the 

 annals of the Turkish empire, from 1592 to 1727, 

 are continued in unbroken succession. Hadschi 

 Chalfa, surnamed Tchelebisade, who died at Con- 

 stantinople, 1657, was distinguished for his histori- 

 cal and literary attainments. Under the title of 

 Open Books, and Knowledge of Science, he com- 

 posed a work of a cyclopaedic and bibliographical 

 character, in which the names of all the branches 

 of science cultivated by the Arabians, Persians and 

 Turks, are given, and the titles of all the works 

 written in these three languages, from the 1st to 

 the 1050th year of the Hegira (A. D. 1640). This 

 work served as the foundation of the Encyclopaedic 

 View of Oriental Science (by Joseph von Hammer, 

 Leipsic, 1804), to which is prefixed an autobiogra- 

 phy of Hadschi Chalfa. Besides this biographical 

 work, and several other writings of Hadschi Chalfa, 

 his chronological tables, beginning with Adam, and 

 continuing to 1640, deserve to be particularly men- 

 tioned. The Latin translation of these, by Reiske, 

 is still to be found in manuscript in the royal lib- 

 rary at Copenhagen. In poetry, also, the Arabians 

 and Persians are their models. Their poems are 

 chiefly of a mystical or moral cast, or devoted to 

 love. We need only mention the romantic poem 

 of the Turk Molla Khosrew, Chosroes and Shereen. 

 Some Turkish eclogues are contained in Hammer' 

 Morgenlandisches Kleeblatt (Eastern Trefoil, Vienna, 

 1819). Riddles, logogryphs, chronograms, and 

 similar poetical trifles, are very popular among 

 them. All their poetical productions are in rhyme. 

 Their prosody and the technical part of their poe- 

 try are the same as those of the Arabians and Per- 

 sians. Mosnevi is a long poem, in which each dis- 

 tich has its peculiar rhyme ; gazelles and cassides 

 are odes or songs with a single rhyme ; the ruby, 



