The Turkish Translations of Qābūsnāmeh in Anatolia

Qābūsnāmeh is an advice manual for princes written in 1082 in Persian. The book has forty-four chapters that include fundamental information, instructions, and advice on princes’ personal daily life and administrative tasks. Some of the main topics addressed in the book include hunting, playing chess, hosting guests, etiquettes of eating, the understanding of horse breeds, rules of becoming a blameless vazir, being a respectful king, and a good commander of the army. Starting from the 14th century, Qābūsnāmeh was translated into Turkish six times by six different translators. It seems that not only has Qābūsnāmeh had a great importance in Anatolia, but it has also had a great deal of support for it to be translated into Turkish several times. The aforementioned topics addressed in Qābūsnāmeh were modified in the Turkish translations of the book in accordance with the socio-political status-quo in Anatolia. Amirs of the different principalities of Anatolia, who were competing with each other in the political field, had great passion to patronize art and literature in their courts. Their passion resulted in the development of the Turkish literary prose in Anatolia. The translation of Qābūsnāmeh in specific created a ground for this development and functioned as a means to create a link between Persian and Turkish advice literature. The main objective of this paper is to shed light on the significant role that Qābūsnāmeh played in linking the Persian and Turkish advice texts. In order to analyze the significance of Qābūsnāmeh in Turkish literature and discuss the reason behind patronizing several translations of it, this paper will focus on the following matters: Persian language and literature and their status in Anatolian principalities, the political and cultural environment of Anatolia in which Qābūsnāmeh was translated and the historical reasons behind the modification of the topics addressed in the book, and the role of the book in the development of Turkish literary prose—specifically, Turkish advice manuals for princes. For this purpose, I will also introduce all of the six translations in outline and briefly talk about the dates of each translation, the rulers to whom each work was dedicated, and the way the topics addressed in the original Persian text was modified.