Ottoman biographies of poets, 1538-1610: Genre, literati and empire

This dissertation examines the earliest Ottoman biographical dictionaries of poets (teẕkiretü'ş-şuʿarās or shortly teẕkires). The titles produced between 1538 and 1610, the dissertation argues, constituted a genre formation in its own right. The unique characteristics of this first phase of Ottoman teẕkire literature are described and analyzed in the context of the era's political developments, elite sociology and cultural sensibilities. It is argued that the genre's unparalleled efflorescence in this period was directly linked with empire-formation and the rise of a new literary language and textual culture on which the administrative, ideological and cultural hegemony of the nascent early modern empire hinged. As the bedrock on which the new literate culture in Turkish rose, in this period Turkish poetry evolved into an independent field of learning and acculturation. It furnished many of the new servants of the state and infused any field of learning, practice and ideology that relied on Turkish. Poetry culture ran exclusively on informal patterns of sociability, with a substantial oral cultural aspect. Nevertheless, these patterns were consistent enough to allow the field to function as a quasi-institution. The teẕkires further helped reify and institutionalize this informal field of social practice. As such, the texts perfectly reflected the nature of the elites that created this poetry culture: a small and cohesive community of imperial servants clustered around the court, which was relatively weakly stratified and professionalized and which distinguished little between their public and private lives.