Shahrangizes in Turkish literature

One of the genres of Turkish literature, shahrangiz is a literary work narrating poetically known and famous people of a city by focusing on the city. It is mostly written in mathnawi style along with other verse styles. At the end of the XVth century it was firstly written by the poet Mesîhî for the city of Edirne. After taking attention, it was also written for mainly the capitals of Ottomans Bursa, Edirne, İstanbul and also Manisa, Skopje, Budapest, Belgrade, Yerevan, Baghdad and etc. This genre became so popular in the XVIth century and started to lose its popularity in the XVIIth century. After the first quarter of the XVIIIth century, it was not seen in the literature. In terms of discussing the city and its inhabitants, it is considered that the city poems have similar features to the city depictions in the mathnawis and other poems written with the personal names as rhyme. In this respect, the first part of this study takes its departure from the name of the genre shahrangiz and the description of cities in mathnawis together with an investigation of the poems written with the personal names as rhyme and other tetrastichs and pentastichs. By doing so it aims to discuss similarities and differences between mathnawis. This part aims to examine to show distinctive features of this genre and give a contemporary definition of it. In the Part II, there is the catalogue of published and manuscript works which suits to the definition of the first part for the genre of shahrangiz. In a separate subheading, there are also texts whose manuscripts are not available but mentioned in another sources with some of verses of these texts. Moreover, this part also engages with some other texts published under the name of shahrangiz but they cannot be thought under the genre of shahrangiz because of the definition given in the first part. This is explained by its reasons. Lastly, in this part, there are also an investigation of catalogue mistakes according to which some manuscripts are recorded as shahrangizes. It includes an analysis of these wrong recorded texts in catalogues and other studies. The Part III of this study focuses on an analysis of genre, form and content of these texts which are accepted as shahrangiz according to the description. The analysis includes some separate headings under which they are examined according to their basic poetic forms and secondary forms used in the poem, meter, composition, selection of the mentioned beautiful persons of the city and their sorting. The Part IV consists of the transcription study of some examples of shahrangizes which were not published when I conducted this study. In the conclusion part, all results coming from the inquire made in these parts are analysed for giving an exact panorama of this genre. According to the conclusion, a new definition of this genre is made. Lastly, it offers some new insights for the further studies on the genre of shahrangiz.