Tuhfetü’l-Haremeyn (On Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina)

Manuscript in Ottoman Turkish.
Due to chronogram written in 1093 [1683]
No name of a copist mentioned, possibly written by Nabi himself.
328 pp., 23 x 16 cm.

Order No.: MSS_109
Status: available
Price: 24 000 € (excl. VAT)

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Nâbi, actually Yūsuf Nābī; born 1642 in Şanlıurfa (Ruhā); died 10 April 1712 in Istanbul; was an Ottoman poet of the 17th /18th century and one of the dominant poet personalities of his time. Nâbi belongs to the group of Dīwān poets. In a total of ten works, four of which are in prose, he takes a critical look at the social reality of his time. A collection of poems in Persian is considered lost. He compiled a dīwān of his early poems in Istanbul. During his time in Aleppo, a second dīwān was created at the request of the governor of Syria, Silâhdâr İbrâhîm Pascha (1705–1708), to which Nâbi used a qasīda to praise the unity of God (tauhīd).
Researchers give two different dates for the completion of the Tuhfetül haremeyn, depending presumably on the chronogram for the narrative. While Levend and Karahan state that Nabi completed his narrative in 1094 [1683] Gibb, Rieu claim that it was in 1093 [1682]. The chronogram in the calculation oft he manuscript also says 1093: The copies of the Tuhfetül haremeyn do not give a single date beneath the chronogram upon which all researchers can agree.
The dates for the chronogram in the copies of the Tuhfetül haremeyn in the Süleymanlye library, the John Rylands Library of Manchester University, Cambridge University Library and the British Library bear varying dates including 1084, 1085, 1089, 1090, 1092 and 1093, and 1095.
The calculation of the chronogram of this copy says: Bu (8) Tuhfe-i (493) haremeynim (348) kabul (138) ide (20) Mevla (86). This esults in the year 1093. The written numbers 1089 indicate the year of the beginning of his journey.
The concluding sentence on the last page suggests that Nabi may have written the manuscript himself:
"İtmam-ı Tuhfe-i Haremeyn kalemim ile olmuş bi feyz-i Halikî Kevneyn ve Seyyidü'l Sakaleyn"
[The completion of the Tuhfe-i Haremeyn with my pen came with the permission of the Creator of the World and the Hereafter and the Lord of the Two Worlds].
- E. J. W. Gibb, History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. III, p. 37
- Abdulkadir Karahan, Nabi, Ankara: KTB, 1987, p. 48
- Agah Sirri Levend, Türk Edebiyati Tarihi 1 (Ankara: TTK), 1973, p. 103
- Menderes Coşkun, Ottoman Pilgrimage Narratives and Nabi’s Tuhfetü’l-Harameyn, PhD thesis, Durham, 1999.
- Charles Rieu, Catalogue of Persian manuscripts in the British Mseum II and III (London 1881 and 1883), p. 980.