Rumi Authors, the Arabic Hisotiographical Tradition and the Ottoman Dawla/Devlet

Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic EDITED BY ESTHER-MIRIAM WAGNER A HANDBOOK AND READER OF OTTOMAN ARABIC A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic Edited by Esther-Miriam Wagner CONTENTS INTRODUCTION...................................................................... xi I. HANDBOOK Michiel Leezenberg 1. Vernacularisation in the Ottoman Empire: Is Arabic the Exception that Proves the Rule? ..................... 1 Necmettin Kızılkaya 2. From Means to Goal: Auxiliary Disciplines in the Ottoman Madrasa Curriculum ....................................... 23 Guy Burak 3. On the Order of the Sciences for He Who Wants to Learn Them ............................................................... 39 Guy Burak 4. Rumi Authors, the Arabic Historiographical Tradition, and the Ottoman Dawla/Devlet ..................... 43 Christopher D. Bahl 5. Arabic Grammar Books in Ottoman Istanbul: The South Asian Connection ................................................ 65 E. Khayyat 6. Bastards and Arabs .................................................... 87 II. READER Dotan Arad and Esther-Miriam Wagner 1. Bodl. Ms. Heb. C. 72/18: A Letter by Isaac Bayt A ān to Moses B. Judah (1480s) ................................ 143 vi Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic Benjamin Hary 2. The Purim Scroll of the Cairene Jewish Community .................................................................. 149 Dotan Arad 3. Appointment Deed of a Cantor in the Karaite Community, Cairo (1575) ............................................ 155 Na em Ilan 4. Aharon Garish, Metsa Aharon ................................. 161 Humphrey Taman Davies 5. Kitāb Hazz al-Qu f (1600s) ..................................... 173 Boris Liebrenz and Kristina Richardson 6. A Weaver’s Notebook from Aleppo (10th/16th century) ....................................................................... 193 Michael Erdman 7. Selections from Arabic Garsh n Manuscripts in the British Library ........................................................ 197 Liesbeth Zack 8. Excerpt from Y suf al-Maġrib ’s Daf al-i r an kalām ahl Mi r (1606) .................................................. 209 Jérôme Lentin 9. Lebanon: Chronicle of al- afad (early 17th century [?]) ................................................................. 227 Werner Diem 10. A Jew’s Testimony Regarding a Statement Made in His Presence by a Muslim, Testified on Monday 20th Kislev 5418 (1657) .............................................. 233 Contents vii Werner Diem 11. A Jew’s Testimony Regarding a Statement Made in His Presence by a Muslim (1681) ............................ 237 Omer Shafran 12. A Basra Passover Haggadah with Judaeo-Arabic Translation (ca. 1700) ................................................. 239 Ghayde Ghraowi 13. Qahwa ‘Coffee’ (16th–17th centuries).................... 243 Jérôme Lentin 14. Egypt: Damurdā ’s Chronicle of Egypt (first half of 18th century) .......................................................... 251 Ani Avetisyan 15. Matenadaran Collection MS No.1751: A Medical Work (1726)................................................................ 255 Esther-Miriam Wagner and Mohamed Ahmed 16. A Clerical Letter by Rafael al- from the Prize Papers Collections (1758)............................................ 261 Esther-Miriam Wagner and Mohamed Ahmed 17. A Christian Mercantile Letter from the Prize Papers Collections (1759)............................................ 267 Feras Krimsti 18. Ḥannā al- ab b, Ri lat al-Shammās annā al- ab b ilā baldat Istanb l (1764/65) .......................... 275 Jérôme Lentin 19. Syria 1: Chronicle of Ibn al- idd q (1768) ............. 283 viii Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic Ahmed Ech-Charfi 20. A Letter Transmitted by Ambassador Hajj Mahd Bargash from Sultan Muḥammad Bin Abdallah to Sultan Abdul Ḥam d (1789 CE).................................... 289 Boris Liebrenz 21. Arab Merchant Letters from the Gotha Collection of Arabic Manuscripts .................................................. 293 Matthew Dudley 22. A Judaeo-Arabic Letter from the Prize Papers Collection, HCA 32/1208/126.2 (1796) ...................... 307 Olav Ørum 23. The Cairo-Ramla Manuscripts, or the Ramle KAR, 13 (1800s) .......................................................... 315 Magdalen M. Connolly 24. A 19th-Century Judaeo-Arabic Folk Narrative ....... 333 Jérôme Lentin 25. Libya 1: Ḥasan al-Faq h Ḥasan’s Chronicle Al-Yawmiyyāt al-L biyya (early 19th century) ............... 349 Jérôme Lentin 26. Libya 2: Letter from Ġ ma al-Maḥm d (1795– 1858) to Azm Bēk, Daftardār of the Iyāla (Province) of Tripoli (undated) .................................... 353 Geoffrey Khan and Esther-Miriam Wagner 27. T-S NS 99.38 (1809) .............................................. 359 Esther-Miriam Wagner and Mohamed Ahmed 28. Rylands Genizah Collection A 803 (1825) ............. 365 Contents ix Jérôme Lentin 29. Syria 2: Chronicle of Muḥammad Sa d al- Us uwān (1840–1861) ........................................... 371 Jérôme Lentin 30. Arabia: A Letter from Abdallah Ḥi ān to Abdallah Bā ā (1855) ................................................. 375 Liesbeth Zack 31. Excerpts from Ya q b an ’s Ab Na āra Zar a and Abd Allāh al-Nad m’s al-Ustā ............................. 381 George Kiraz 32. A Disgruntled Bishop: A Garsh n Letter from Bishop Dinḥā of Midyat to Patriarch Peter III.............. 399 Alex Bellem and G. Rex Smith 33. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Jarād : S rat al- awāja al- Akram al-Mar m Harmān al- Almān ..................... 415 Esther-Miriam Wagner 34. Ora ve-Simḥa (1917) ............................................. 427 Charles Häberl 35. A ‘Mandæo-Arabic’ Letter from Lady Drower’s Correspondence ........................................................... 431 Tania María García-Arévalo 36. An Anecdote about Juḥā (1920s) .......................... 441 REFERENCES ....................................................................... 445 4. RUMI AUTHORS, THE ARABIC HISTORIOGRAPHICAL TRADITION, AND THE OTTOMAN DAWLA/DEVLET Guy Burak In J m d II 965/April 1558, he en o of he ha f of Mecca, the Hanafi jurist, scholar, and chronicler Qu b al-D n M b. A mad b. Mu ammad al-Nahra ammad l (d. 1582) isi ed Is anb l and met with Semiz Ali Pa a, hen second i ier and f re grand vizier of the Empire (served as grand vizier from 1561 to 1565).1 The Meccan en o as impressed b ests and, particularly, b he i ier s scholarl in er- he la er s in eres in his or (ta kh). When the vizier informed the envoy of his successful military campaigns against the infidels, al-Nahra l arned he i ier: if what you have mentioned is not recorded, it will perish from memory and its virtues will not be known after a few years, and when whoever was present in that campaign perishes, his narration [of events, khabar] will perish as well. No one will remember [the campaign] and its 1 On al-Nahra l see Blackb rn (2012). See also the Introduction in Blackburn (2005). On Semiz Ali Pa a, see Mantran (2012). Al- Nahra l left two reports of this encounter: in his travelogue (Black- burn 2005, 168 69) and in his chronicle; for the latter see al-Nahra l (2004, 310 11). ‹*X\%XUDN&&%<KWWSVGRLRUJ2%3 44 Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic knowledge will vanish from the pages of existence ( afa al- j d) after a short while. The Meccan envoy immediately mentioned the interest of Arab scholars ( lam ) in the science of history and even provided the vizier with a relevant example: the 13th-cen r chronicler Ab Sh ma s (d. 1267) al-Raw a a n f akhb Sh ma 1997). Ab al-dawlatayn (Ab Sh ma s chronicle, al-Nahra l e plained, records the military campaigns against the crusaders undertaken during the reigns (dawla) of N r al-D n (d. 1174) and al D n al-A b (d. 1193). Al-Nahra l hen concl ded book, al- This mos e q isi e and bea if l he Meccan poin ed o , remained in he pages of ime. i h a q es ion: Wh aren o r histories (akhb ak m) and deeds ( h ak m) recorded in the books [of history], eternalised in the pages of the eras and time periods? Upon hearing he en o s q es ion, Semi Ali Pa a asked the scholar and jurist K nal ade Ali Çelebi (d. 1572), whom al-Nahra l described as he ime s mos poser in Arabic (fa l dhalika al- aq f al-in h compile a al- A ab ), to ork like Ab Sh mah s. According o al-Nahra K nal ade s ar ed orking on he Arabic chronicle, never completed (Al-Nahra 2 ir o s com- l 2004, 310 11). l, hich he 2 On Kinalizade see Tezcan (1996) and Köker (1999). Kinali ade s fa- miliarity with the Arabic scholarly traditions may have been one of the reasons for his eventual appointment, in 1562, to the chief judgeship of Damascus. On his encounters with the Damascene scholars see Pfeifer (2015). Rumi Authors, Arabic Historiography, and the Dawla/Devlet 45 The vignette is revealing for several reasons. First, the exchange between the three protagonists reveals intriguing dynamics between the different parts of the Empire and their respective intellectual/historiographical/literary traditions. Al-Nahra l ,a Meccan jurist and scholar, was well-versed in the Arabic historiographical tradition. The vizier, who was of Bosnian descent and had entered the imperial administration as a young boy, on the other hand, was known for his patronage of at least two works in simple T rkish o er he co rse of his career: a short treatise on the Ottoman construction projects in Mecca, which he commissioned during his tenure as governor of Egypt, and the Book of Prayer (du -n me), which he commissioned during his grand vi- zierate.3 And K nal ade, he mos ir o s ri er in Arabic [among he R mis], emerges as one of he rela i el fe schol- ars from the core, predominantly Turkish-speaking lands of the Empire sufficiently familiar with the Arabic historiographical tradition to compile a chronicle like Ab Sh ma s. Secondly, al-Nahra l s commen on he s a e of O oman historiography merits attention. By the mid-16th century, when al-Nahra l isi ed he O oman capi al, n mero s chronicles devoted to the history of the Ottoman dynasty had already been written.4 Al-Nahra 3 l clearl misrepresen ed he s a e of his or- For the treatise on the Ottoman construction projects see Burak (2017, 315 n. 2). On the Du a-name, which was authored by the famous chief mufti Ebu s-Su ud Efendi (d. 1574), see Kaleli (2014). 4 The literature on 15th-century historiography in the Ottoman lands is quite vast. See, for instance, Mengüç (2013) and the bibliography 46 Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic ical writing in the core lands of the Empire. His implicit observation, however, that few historical works were written in Arabic in the core lands of the Empire, was quite accurate, as most historical works were compiled in Ottoman Turkish and Persian. But assuming that both the Meccan envoy and the vizier knew about the historiographical corpus in Turkish (and Persian), the former s s a emen abo he lack of his orical ri ing, presumably in Arabic, in the core lands of the Empire implied a hierarchy between the Arabic and Turkish historiographical traditions: it was only historical writing in Arabic, according to al-Nahra l, that was truly eternal. This was obviously a view of a scholar versed in the Arabic historiographical tradition. But in the second half of the 16th century, several scholars and chroniclers from the core lands of the Empire (known as Rumis, from the Land of Rum )5 follo ed in K nal ade s footsteps and were receptive to this view of historical writing. The differences between the historiographical traditions that coexisted throughout the empire were more than simply a matter of language. Each historiographical tradition employed conceptual and stylistic conventions that were not easily translatable. The emergence of a Rumi Arabic historical writing in the second half of the 16th century was also intended to provide the Ottoman ruling and administrative elite with a vocabulary to letherein. See also the section on historical writings in the palace library of Bayezid II: Fleischer and ahin (2019, 569 96). 5 On Ruminess see Kafadar (2007). Rumi Authors, Arabic Historiography, and the Dawla/Devlet 47 gitimise their rule over the newly conquered Arabic-speaking territories of Greater Syria, Egypt, the Hijaz, and, slightly later, Arab Iraq. This essay seeks to focus on one of these conventions: the Arabic expression al-Dawla al- U hm ni a. This expression, I would like to suggest, was embedded in the Arabic historiographical tradition, but was quite alien to the Turkish (and Persian) ones. It is for this reason that this expression opens a window into broader dynamics that await further study. I will return to this point in the concluding section of this essay. 1.0. Rumi Authors, Arabic Chronicles In the chapter on History/Historiography ( Ilm-i Ta h) in his work on the classification of the sciences, Nev i Efendi (d. 1599) pro ides his readers ih he books associa ed i h his [sci- ence (el-Kütübü l-musannefetü fih): The His or of Ibn Ka h r, he History of al- abar , he His or of Ibn A h r al-Ja ar , he His or of Ibn al-Ja and his Mir al-Zam n, the History of Ibn Khal- lik n, he His or of Ibn ኇ ajar [al- Asqal n ], he His or of alafad , he His or of Jal l al-D n al-Suyu , Siyar al- a hh d, ilyat al-ab , the History of History of al-Baghd d , Ta kh al- ba a-l- ak m al-N s b ri , he kam , Kashf al-ghamm, and Ta kh al-umam. It is worth pointing out that all the titles in this list were compiled in Arabic (Prochazka-Eisl and Çelik 2015, 53). This fact is particularly striking, as Nev i Efendi chose to write his work in Turkish and included works written in Persian. In addition, it is quite evident that he relied on chronicles written in Turkish for his survey of the history of the Ottoman dynasty 48 Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic (Prochazka-Eisl and Çelik 2015, 72 77). Nev i Efendi was probabl inspired b he ork of his earlier colleag e, Ahmed Ta k - prüzade (d. 1560). In the section devoted to History in his comprehensi e ork on he classifica ion of he sciences, Ta k - prüzade offers a remarkably similar, though much longer, list of orks. Among he orks Ta k pr ade s lis s are The His or of Ibn Ka h r, he His or of al- abar , he His or of Ibn al-A h r alJa ar , he His or of Ibn al-Ja , Ibn al-Ja s Mir he His or of Ibn Khallik n, he His or of Ibn Anb al-gham f abn al- am n, ajar and his al- amr and al-Durar al-k mina f a n al- mi a al- h mina, the History of al- afad , he His or of Jal l al- D n al-S abaq and his abaq al-l gha i n a-l-nu al-nu h (his Bughyat al-wu h f h), the History of al-Baghd d , the supplement to al-Baghd d s His or b Ibn al-Najj r, he Hisor and orks of Ab Sa d al-Sam n , he s pplemen to al- Sam n s His or b al-DabÇlj h , he His or of al-DhahabÇlj, Kitāb al-b b Ibn Ab Man r, and Ya ma al-dahr by al-N s b r . At he concl sion of he lis , Ta k pr ade briefl s a es ha chronicles in Persian are oo n mero s o be co n ed, b he does not include a similar list of noteworthy Persian and Turkish chronicles (T shk br da [Ta k pr appears ha for Ta k pr ade] 1968, 1:251 70).6 It ade, m ch like for Ne i Efendi, the point of reference was the historiographical tradition in Arabic. Nothing attests more o Ta k pr ade s his oriographical preferences to writing history in Arabic than his own introduction to his biographical dictionaries of the jurists and scholars 6 For an English translation of this section, see Rosenthal (1968, 530 35). Rumi Authors, Arabic Historiography, and the Dawla/Devlet 49 who were affiliated with the Ottoman dynasty. In the introduction to this work, he explains why he decided to compile this work: Since I [learned to] distinguish between right and left, between the straight [path] and trickery, I sought passionlam ately the merits of the and their histories (akhb ), and I was obsessed with memorising their important deeds and their works, until I would accumulate a large [body of knowledge] in my weak memory [so] it would fill the books and notebooks. Historians have recorded the merits of the lam and the notables according to what has been established through transmission or was confirmed by eyewitnesses, [but] no one has paid attention to the lam of these lands, and [consequently] their names and practices have almost vanished from the tongues of every present [i.e., living person] and [their memory] perished. When the people of excellence and perfection noticed this situation, they asked me to gather all the merits of the in Rum. (T shk br da [Ta k pr No e he similari ies be ade] 1975, 5) lam een he passage from Ta k pr introduction and the comment al-Nahra Vizier. Writing in Arabic, Ta k pr ade s l made o he Grand ade claims ha onl he re- cording of the histories of the Rumi scholars as part of the Arabic historiographical corpus a corpus that was compiled elsewhere, beyond the Ottoman lands can perpetuate their memory. It appears that the perception of and anxiety about the Arabic historiographical tradition as more eternal than historical writings in Turkish and Persian subsided over the course of the 17th century. For instance, in the universal history he wrote in Arabic, M neccimba (or M najjim B sh , d. 1702) incl des a bibliography of historical works on which he drew. Although he 50 Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic organised the list according to the languages in which the works were written, his bibliography represented the historiographical traditions in the three languages: Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. Ye , i seems significan ha M neccimba (J mi al-duwal, 2a) retained the distinction between the traditions. Clearly, he knew that each of these traditions followed different conventions and employed distinctive vocabularies. Most studies of historical writing in the Ottoman lands have tended to focus on the historiographical production in a specific language. The insightful collection of essays on Ottoman courtly historiography focuses almost exclusively on works written in Ottoman Turkish ( pa and Fetvaci 2013). On the other hand, Michael Winter, in his survey of Arabic historiography in the Ottoman Empire, ignores the writings in Persian and Turkish (Winter 2006, 171 90). To be sure, most scholars acknowledge that writings in Turkish include many expressions from Arabic and Persian and that expressions in Arabic frequently feature in Persian texts. But little scholarly attention has been paid to the manner in which the historiographical traditions relate to one another: are there particular expressions or conventions that can be associated (or, at least, more commonly associated) with a certain tradition? Which expressions and conventions were borrowed and, equally important, which were not? And when and why did authors choose to write in a specific historiographical tradition? These questions draw attention to differences among the various historiographical traditions that coexisted and interacted throughout the Ottoman realms. In a recent study of 15th-century debates among five thinkers writing in Arabic and Persian about Rumi Authors, Arabic Historiography, and the Dawla/Devlet 51 the nature of historical inquiry, Christopher Markiewicz (2017, 221) argues that monolingual approaches to Islamic historiography further obscure the full extent of the fifteenth-century discourse on history. The tendency to divide Islamic historiography between its Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish expressions reinforces an understanding of the historical traditions as separate, linguistically delineated dialectics. Moreover, while considerations of Ottoman historical writing generally acknowledge its relationship to Arabic and especially Persian historiography, the interrelationship between the three remains only superficially acknowledged. Markiewicz thus concludes that the wide-ranging interaction between Arabic and Persian historical thought since the tenth century and Turkish historiography, as well, beginning in the fifteenth century constituted a fundamental aspect of the development of Islamic historiography as a vibrant cultural tradition until the rise of national historiographies in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I do no disagree i h Markie ic s general obser a ion, but, in this short essay, I would like to highlight the special semiotic baggage that writing in Arabic carried in the context of a multilingual empire and the dynamics between multiple historiographical traditions. It seems to me that the study of historical writing in the Ottoman lands lamic(ate) world more broadly and, in fact, across the Isought to acknowledge the fairly wide range of interactions between these traditions, from the retention of differences to translations and borrowings. In this 52 Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic sense, what follows seeks to nuance the idea of a single historiographical projec as a sing lar ibran c l ral radi ion. Paying attention to these differences can also reveal how members of various learned circles across the Empire employed historiographical traditions and conventions to legitimise Ottoman rule and to enrich the Ottoman repertoire of power. At the same time, studying the manners in which certain expressions were employed may reveal tensions between competing claims and political projects. To illustrate this point, I now turn to examining in some de ail he se of he e pression he O oman Da la (or al-Dawla al- U hm ni a) in the 16th and 17th centuries. 2.0. Ottoman Devlet/Ottoman Dawla In what is perhaps the most systematic study of the meaning of the term dawla during the Mamluk period (1250 1517), Jo Van Steenbergen (2016, 55) observes that [i]n the course of many centuries of Arabic and Islamic history the Arabic noun dawla has appeared as a generic qualifier in many different contexts of rule, with complex meanings that are not always easily rendered in other languages. However, in its semantic essence, as suggested by Arabic lexicographers, dawla is always meant to refer in hese con e s of r le o a par ic lar poli ical forma ion s temporary local monopoly of violence and of access to resources [. . .] But historically the Arabic noun dawla has always also been imbued with the transcendent, religious meaning of a God-gi en rn the literal translation of the Arabic noun dawla or term of rule in the monotheist trajectory of human history. In the hearts, minds and ears Rumi Authors, Arabic Historiography, and the Dawla/Devlet 53 of those who used it, dawla therefore appealed to the idea of a universal empire as much as to that of a territorial state. The multi-layered nature of the term dawla a political and au- thoritative order and a divinely ordained mandate to rule poses considerable questions when one encounters the use of the possessive adjective attached to it (or the compound noun), as in the case of Dawlat al-A k the dawla of the Turks or al-dawla al- U hm ni a in Mamluk Arabic sources. Evidently, Mamluk authors imagined a trans-regional hierarchy of (West-Asian or even wider) legitimate political leadership, which included Syrian viceroys as well as all kinds of Mongol, post-Mongol and other leaders, and which was topped by the royal persona of the sultan in Cairo. (Steenbergen 2016, 55) Moreover, this perception of multiple dawlas, each with its own political and institutional orders, was also based on a sense of temporality, hence the succession of several dawlas in Mamluk historiography (Steenbergen 2016, 65). One could argue that Ottoman authors were not oblivious to the perception of dawla from the Mamluk sources. But Ottoman sources, mostly written in Turkish, tended to focus on the more universal dimensions of dawla or devlet.7 For 15th- and 16th-century Ottoman writers, following Dimi ris Kas ri sis 7 The Ottoman authors were drawing on a well-established use of the term dawlat in Persian sources from the Ilkhanid period onward (Allsen 2009, 1 7). I am grateful to Yoni Brack for bringing this piece to my attention and for an illuminating discussion on the use of the term dawlat in the Ilkhanid context. 54 Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic (2007, 98, 200 3) translation of the term, devlet conveyed a sense of charismatic rule, or, in H se in Y lma s (2018, 139, 157) ransla ion, for ne or a spicio s rn o r le. Importantly, while many contenders to the throne may have some degree of devlet, once enthroned, devlet temporarily resided with the ruling sultan. As an early 15th-century source quips with regard to the competition among Ottoman princes during the interregnum, Al ho gh devlet existed in Musa,/The devlet of Mehmed [the fure Mehmed I] as r l grea er! (Kastritsis 2007, 219, 226). This is not to say that Ottoman dynasts did not recognise the legitimacy of other Muslim rulers or did not assume that the House of Osman as a whole had a right to rule, but it is important to note that, for the most part, authors writing in Turkish over the course of the 15th through the 17th centuries were quite reluctant to attach a possessive adjective Ottoman to the noun devlet. Instead, in the 16th cen r , as Y lma (2018, 275) has observed, they stressed its eternity. 3.0. Rumi Authors and Their Use of al-Dawla alʿUthmaniyya In the second half of the 16th century, several Rumi authors, that is, authors from the core, predominantly Turkish-speaking regions of the Empire, engaged in writing works in Arabic. Being Rumi, it should be emphasised, was not simply a matter of geography. In the context of an expanding empire, it was also a matter of political affiliation with the Ottoman dynasty. These Rumi authors who were writing in Arabic were astutely aware of the con- Rumi Authors, Arabic Historiography, and the Dawla/Devlet 55 ventions of the Arabic historiographical tradition. In fact, the encounter of what was now the core lands of the Ottoman empire, and of Anatolia more generally, with historical writings in Arabic long predated the Ottoman conquest. Indeed, the inventory of the library of Bayezid II includes historiographical essays and chronicles in Arabic, some of which were even sent directly to members of his close retinue from the Mamluk capital (Markiewicz 2017, 236 40). What is intriguing about the second half of the 16th cen r is he R mi a hors e perimen i h, par icipa ion in, and response to the Arabic historiographical tradition. Perhaps the most extreme example of this engagement is the probably early 17th-century compilation of a text that was falsely attributed to the renowned 13th-century mystic Mu al- D n Ibn Arab (d. 1241), i led al-Shajara al-nu m ni a f aldawla al- U hm ni a ( the Tree of Nu m n on he O oman Rule/Good Fortune ). In this short and popular text, Ibn Arab allegedly foresaw the Ottoman conquest of the Arab lands. As Ahmed Zildzic, who studied in great detail the Shajara and its commentaries, has noted (Zildzic 2012, 85) [t]he oldest existent copy of al-Shajara comes from the first half of the XVII century, and if we accept that the date is not a later interpolation, we can conclude the text of alShajara as it reached us originated more than a century later than the events it discusses. What is evident, however, is the universal acceptance of the work in the Ottoman cultural and intellectual context. For our purpose here, the important point is that the late anonymous author used the term al-Dawla al- U hm ni a in the title of the treatise to indicate that it originated in the early 13th 56 Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic century in the Arabic-speaking lands. Indeed, one could argue that the invocation of the term was quite antiquarian. As I have already suggested above, Ta k pr ade was in- terested in writing an Arabic biographical dictionary that would commemorate the names and deeds of jurists and Sufi masters who were affiliated with the Ottoman dynasty. Clearly, he sought to be part of the Arabic historiographical tradition. Fittingly, the work is replete with references to that tradition and the conventions of the genre of the biographical dictionary. He even decides to call the Ottoman political project al-Dawla al- U hm ni a. Several decades later, during the reign of Murad III (r. 1574 1595), a third author, Mustafa Cenabi (d. 1590/1591), chose to pen a work in Arabic, a universal history from the creation of the world to the Ottoman dynasty. Cenabi devoted chapters to the various dynasties who ruled the world, from the ancient Persian kings to his patrons, the Ottomans. Throughout, Cenabi (Cenabi Tarihi) selectively employs the term dawla: the asan dawla of Mecca, he H shim i dawla of Medina, the Circassian dawla (the Mamluks), the Ala / asan dawla of Tabaristan and Jurjan, the Samanid dawla, the dawla of Chinggis Khan, the Uzbek dawla, the dawla of the Ak Koyunlu and the Ottoman dawla. Indeed, this list of dawlas seems to reflect the rans-regional hierarchy of (West-Asian or even wider) legiti- ma e poli ical leadership (Steenbergen 2016, 55) that one finds in Mamluk sources and the sense that dawla can be divided among rulers and dynasties. Rumi Authors, Arabic Historiography, and the Dawla/Devlet 57 4.0. Conclusion The macaronic nature of the language that is commonly referred to as Ottoman Turkish is quite well known and frequently mentioned in handbooks for students of the language. Students of Ottoman Turkish are encouraged to study Arabic, Persian, and Modern Turkish/Turkic language and, based on this knowledge, to understand the logic of Ottoman Turkish . This is, of course, an anachronistic perception of languages in general and of Ottoman Turkish in particular, as it assumes fairly well-defined linguistic traditions or languages which are macaronically intertwined. But both Persian and Turkic languages have accumulated over the centuries numerous words that are morphologically Arabic. In many cases, the words retained their original Arabic lexicographical meaning. But this has not always been the case. This linguistic entanglement raises an intriguing question: Where does Arabic end and Ottoman Turkish begin? This short essay is an attempt to explore these complex dynamics between Arabic and Turkish in the Ottoman lands. My goal is no , o paraphrase Nile Green s (2019, 2) comment on Persian in the introduction to the recent volume on the Persianae orld, o promo e Arabic [ ], b ra her o anal e Arabic as a field of sociolinguistic contact, and in doing so recognise the roles of hegemon and compe i ion [ ]. Indeed, as Murat Umut Inan (2019, 88) argues in his essay on Persian in the Ottoman world in the same volume, the history of Persian add, of Arabic in he O oman con e is in er and, one may ined i h m l- iple his ories of he empire. Much like Persian, Arabic afforded 58 Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic Rumi writers a range of possibilities to promote political and intellectual claims, but also engendered anxiety and envy. The manner in which Rumi writers employed the terms al-Dawla alU hm ni a and the anecdote with which I opened this essay capture these possibilities and anxieties. Furthermore, the tension between devlet and dawla, which draws on the distinction between different linguistic/historiographical traditions, poses a translation challenge: how should one translate al-Dawla al- Uthm niyya into, say, English? This translation challenge is what got me interested in exploring the relationship between devlet and dawla in the first place. Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere (Burak 2015, 94 98), in his alShaq iq al-nu m niyya, Ta k pr ade employed Mamluk (and Arabic) historiographical conventions to legitimise and record the history of the Ottoman learned hierarchy and the Sufi masters that were associated with the Ottoman domains. Accordingly, the narrative arc of the Shaq iq diverges in terms of its historiographical and, indeed, political assumptions from those of Mamluk biographical dictionaries. Most notably, the Ottoman dynasty is he organising principle of Ta k pr Ta k r ade s ork. F r her, hen ade s Shaq iq was translated by Mehmed Mecdi Efendi (d. 1591) into Ottoman Turkish , al-Dawla al- Uthm niyya entered Ottoman Turkish historiography. This Turkified expression raises yet another, though related, translation question: how should one translate the 16th-century expression Devlet-i Osmaniyye into English? Rumi Authors, Arabic Historiography, and the Dawla/Devlet 59 References Ab Sh ma. 1997. 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