Abstract:

Shehrengizes are works written in verse that promote the natural and historical beauty as well as the renowned tradesmen (belles) in various branches of profession and trade. Offering their first examples with 16th century in the Ottoman field, shehrengizes were no longer in demand in the 18th century at the end of two-century-old process and disappeared some time later. There are more than sixty sehrengizes in our literature written about many cities like Istanbul, Edirne and Bursa. One of them is Shehrengiz of Sinop written by Beyani. Beyânî lived in the 16th century in which shehrengizes recently gained prevalence and presented one of the examples of this genre for his hometown Sinop. There are ten poets with pseudonym Beyânî in our literature and information on many of them is available in a variety of resources. However, there is a short information about Beyânî of Sinop only in Âlî of Gelibolu’s work entitled Künhü’l-Ahbâr. Âlî also provided information about Beyânî of Sinop after the item “Beyânî” with the following statements: “Yanbolıdan bir Beyani da?i gelmişdür. Biri da?i Edirneden ?uhur itmişdür. ?atta bir Beyani-i heccav da?i Sul?an Murad ?an-ı s_alis_ devrinde Sinob nam ?a?abadan vücud bulmış idi.” Beyânî was a poet known with his satire that lived in the period of Murad III (1574-1595) according to the statements included here. It is unclear whether the poet had works other than the mathnawis called Şâh u Derviş apart from Shehrengiz of Sinop. However, Sadettin Nüzhet Ergun mentioned about a pentastich that belonged to him after introducing Beyânî in his work called Türk Şairleri. This shows us that the poet might have other works apart from masthnawis. It is understood that he received a good education by referring to his works in which no information on his life was included. Shehrengiz of Sinop, written by Beyânî, is the only shehrengiz composed for this province and the date of its composition is unclear. The only copy of the work is registered at no 2020/2 of Turkish Manuscripts in Izmir National Library. The work is located in 35a-45b pages of the corpus. Tearing and deletions occurred in some parts of the corpus due to wearing. Couplets were written in a single column on the last page of the text on whose page usually 4 columns were written. Shehrengiz was composed in diwani calligraphy even though different writing styles were used in the corpus. Shehrengiz of Sinop bears many common features with many of shehrengizes in our literature. First of all, the poet, in this work, complied with the general scheme of arrangement in other shehrengizes. This type of shehrengizes usually begins with the “Invocation” section in which poets pray to God for forgiveness from the sins they feel guilty about because of the beauties they fell in love with and continues with supplications and the “Sebeb-i Te‘lif (Reason for writing)” in which explanation on the reason why the work was drafted. Sometimes, the depictions of day, night and dawn were included in this section. The praises on the most beautiful belles in the city are presented apart from these. The work ends with “Hatime (Epilogue)” after the completion of praises. Shehrengiz of Sinop consisted of nine sections in accordance with the information given above: Invocation in Shehrengiz of Sinop Supplication The attributes of Night and Reason for drafting Shehrengiz The attributes of Day and Conversation with biting language The characteristics of Sinop Province and Mergûb Fortress Description of the Mosque The praise of Handek Garden Description of Boztepe The attributes of Belles The work, observing the tradition in terms of prosody and versification, was composed in mathnawi form and mefâ’ilün mefâ’ilün fa’ûlün pattern. At the end of the work consisting of 230 verses, there is also a section consisting of 5 verses written in mefâ‘îlün / mefâ‘îlün / mefâ‘îlün / mefâ‘îlün pattern and verse of ode in which the poet offer

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