Translation as Rewriting: Yazıcızāde ‘Āli’s Political Use of Poetry in Tevārīḫ-i Āl-i Selçuk

Abstract

“Translation as Rewriting” examines Tevārīḫ-i Āl-i Selçuk (hereafter TĀS), a history of the Anatolian Seljuks that Yazıcızāde ʿAlī composed in 1424 or 1436/7 by translating Persian chronicles into Turkic. Drawing on a textual analysis of its poetry section, this thesis argues that TĀS was an ideological challenge to the Persian history-writing tradition that had associated Turkic rulers with legendary kings of Iran. Although having been long neglected, poetry in Ottoman historiography is a useful lens through which to understand the author’s political values; Ottoman litterateurs expressed their emotions and opinions more concisely and transparently in verse than in prose. Poetry in TĀS reveals that ʿAlī adopted the narrative technique of the Ilkhanate historian Rashīd al-Dīn but in an innovative way. Like Rashīd al-Dīn’s Jāmiʿ al-Tavārīkh (hereafter Jāmiʿ), TĀS emphasizes the Turkic origin of the Sultans in Anatolia and describes them as devout Muslims who fight for justice (ʿadl). But unlike Jāmiʿ, ʿAlī invented the concept of Kayı lineage to differentiate the Ottomans. Kayı lineage is a rhetorical device for legitimizing specifically the Ottoman rulers, serving as a substitute for farr (“glory”) in Persian mythology. ʿAlī asserts that thanks to this virtue the Ottoman dynasty will not fall into the inevitable demise (ecel) but enjoy eternity (ebed).