Abstract:

Turkish literature between 13th and 19th centuries is classified as Divan Literature, Classical Turkish Literature and Old Turkish Literature. When left out the Turkish Literature shaped under the impact of West after 1850, this era is better to be named as Ottoman Literature. In this almost six centuries long era, the number of poets that were mentioned through biography sources directly or indirectly is about seven thousand. The reason why this big number of poets came into being lies under the fact that family members of dynasty were engaged in poetry and even some of them organized divans. Poetry rather than prose, and divans composed of selected poems and odes are prioritized by Ottoman writers and poets. The high number poets, as a matter of course, led to some kinds of rating among poets. Today’s distinction is done through titles like first grade and second grade while it was done in previous periods through titles like “sultans of poets”, “kings of poets” and “chiefs of poets”. This tradition of giving title seen in others Turkish societies apart from Ottoman territory is still living in Republic of Turkey era. It has been determined that sixty poets, forty of them during Ottoman era, are entitled to show their levels at poetry. Taken the high number of poets, it is highly likely that the number of entitled poets will increase in new studies. This paper will focus on the reason of titles, the content of titles and by whom and why these titles were given, and some sort of information about poets and the sources in which they are mentioned with their titles will be given. 

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