Lot Essay
The other title of the work Sharaf-i Insan is indicated on the flyleaf.
It appears the manuscript was written for and presented to Sulaiman the Magnificent (1520-1566 AD) in his sixth regnal year (AH 933/1526-7 AD): there is a tugra on f1r. showing the manuscript was accepted by the Ottoman Sultan and preserved in the Imperial Library.
It is is probably a holograph copy: it is rubricated and the headings are given marginally.
Mahmud bin Osman bin Naqqash 'Ali bin Ilyas (AH 878-938/1472-1532 AD) was a prominent sixteenth century Ottoman literary figure known by the pseudonym Lami'i. His grandfather was the fifteenth century artist Naqqash 'Ali, trained in Samarkand by Timur, and his father was finance minister to Sultan Bayazid I in Bursa, where Lami'i remained after the capital had moved to Istanbul. Lami'i became a Naqshbandi mystic and lived a simple life, earning a living entirely from his writings and rising to prominence under Selim I. He had four children, one of whom followed him into both mysticism and poetry.
He wrote both prose and verse, and, with a throrough knowledge of the Persian language and its literature, was strongly influenced by 'Abd al-Rahman Jami' (d.AH 898/1492 AD) and Mir 'Ali Shir Neva'i (d.AH 906/1501 AD), both of whom were affiliated to the Naqshbandi movement. Much of his work was the translation of Persian works into Turkish, often with additions of his own, giving him the nickname Jami'-i Rum or Jami' of Anatolia.
This work, Sherif-i Insan is in fact a translation from the Arabic of the 21st part of the 51-part philosophical encyclopaedia, the Ikhwan al-Safa. It is written in prose and concerns the debate between animal and humans, possibly containing some of Lami'i's own ideas.
Although a rare work, Lami'i obviously considered it one of his more important, since in the preface he lists all his 24 works up to that date. He dates it AH 933/1526-7 AD and tells us that he was 55 when he composed it, thus enabling us to place his year of birth and his age at death 5 years later (by which time he had written 5 more works).
Mu'jain al-Mu'alifin: VR.12, p.179.
Kut, Gunay: Lami'i Chelebi and his Works, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, April 1976, Vol.36, No.2.
It appears the manuscript was written for and presented to Sulaiman the Magnificent (1520-1566 AD) in his sixth regnal year (AH 933/1526-7 AD): there is a tugra on f1r. showing the manuscript was accepted by the Ottoman Sultan and preserved in the Imperial Library.
It is is probably a holograph copy: it is rubricated and the headings are given marginally.
Mahmud bin Osman bin Naqqash 'Ali bin Ilyas (AH 878-938/1472-1532 AD) was a prominent sixteenth century Ottoman literary figure known by the pseudonym Lami'i. His grandfather was the fifteenth century artist Naqqash 'Ali, trained in Samarkand by Timur, and his father was finance minister to Sultan Bayazid I in Bursa, where Lami'i remained after the capital had moved to Istanbul. Lami'i became a Naqshbandi mystic and lived a simple life, earning a living entirely from his writings and rising to prominence under Selim I. He had four children, one of whom followed him into both mysticism and poetry.
He wrote both prose and verse, and, with a throrough knowledge of the Persian language and its literature, was strongly influenced by 'Abd al-Rahman Jami' (d.AH 898/1492 AD) and Mir 'Ali Shir Neva'i (d.AH 906/1501 AD), both of whom were affiliated to the Naqshbandi movement. Much of his work was the translation of Persian works into Turkish, often with additions of his own, giving him the nickname Jami'-i Rum or Jami' of Anatolia.
This work, Sherif-i Insan is in fact a translation from the Arabic of the 21st part of the 51-part philosophical encyclopaedia, the Ikhwan al-Safa. It is written in prose and concerns the debate between animal and humans, possibly containing some of Lami'i's own ideas.
Although a rare work, Lami'i obviously considered it one of his more important, since in the preface he lists all his 24 works up to that date. He dates it AH 933/1526-7 AD and tells us that he was 55 when he composed it, thus enabling us to place his year of birth and his age at death 5 years later (by which time he had written 5 more works).
Mu'jain al-Mu'alifin: VR.12, p.179.
Kut, Gunay: Lami'i Chelebi and his Works, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, April 1976, Vol.36, No.2.