The Selīmnāme of Celālzāde Muṣṭafā Çelebi is a history of the early career and the reign (1512-20) of the Ottoman Sultan Selīm I. The part which forms the subject of the present edition and translation covers the early career of Selīm, up to his accession to the Ottoman throne, and concentrates particularly on the troubled state of Anatolia during the latter part of the reign of Selīm's father, Bāyezīd II, and on the events which led to Selīm's acquiring the Sultanate in the face of strong competition from his brother Aḥmed. Celālzāde Muṣṭafā had entered the service of the Ottoman government halfway through Selīm's reign, in 1516, as a scribe of the Imperial Dīvān. Under Selīm's son and successor, Süleymān, he was promoted, first to the office of Re'īs ül-Küttāb (1525) and then to that of Nişānci (1534), which he held, with great distinction, for twenty-three years. The Selīmnāme was written sometime between 1557 and 1566, during the period of his retirement. In explaining his reason for writing the book, Celālzāde asserts that none of the accounts of Selīm's reign which have so far been written, reflect the true facts, because they were written by uninformed people. He himself claims to have gained his knowledge from reliable people (including Pirī Pasha, Grand Vizier during the last two years of Selīm's reign, whom he served as private secretary). He also implies that his position as Nişānci, by giving him access to documents relating to the period, has made him especially well qualified to set the record straight. The Selīmnāme has not been published, but survives in six manuscript copies, which are located in Istanbul, Dresden, London and Manchester. The critical edition nere presented is based on a full collation of the relevant sections of all these manuscripts, which has yielded sufficient evidence regarding the inter-relationship of them to make possible the postulation of a stemma codicum. Descriptions of the manuscripts, and a discussion of the main patterns of variation between them, are included in the introduction to this thesis. The notes accompanying the translation are intended primarily as a commentary on the text itself, and include a considerable element of discussion of linguistic and semantic problems. The significance of historical terns occurring, and the identity of persons mentioned in the text are also made the subject of notes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:461839 |
| Date | January 1975 |
| Creators | Kerslake, Celia |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d6c23926-0a83-490a-8771-9ad437b2f3a7 |
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