Abstract
The Reflections of the Conquest of Peloponnese (1715) in the Classical Turkish Literature and the Poem of Râzî Conquest Themmed (Fetihnâme)
As in the literary tradition of every nation / era,
classical Turkish literature has not been uninterested to the
main constituens of its society such as social life, cultural
values and beliefs. In the poetry genres where the intention
of poeticalness/literariness is at the highest level, like gazal,
the society and social life be reflected in deep metaphoric
language and implicitly. In addition to this, there are some
genres in this literary tradition that open doors to society
and social life in a language and expression that is more
real, nonfigurative and explicitly. In the chronogram
poems that can be counted among these genres; while quite
different events such as birth, death, marriage and
appointment are dated, political events are not overlooked,
especially within the framework of patronage tradition. In
this sense, the conquests in the Ottoman Era were among
the most popular events for classical poets to write
chronograms. The conquest of Peloponnese (in
1127/1715), has been subject to Ottoman literature in
various ways and dated by many poets of the period. In this
article, the reflections of the mentioned conquest in the
classical Turkish poetry are ascertained and evaluated. For
this purpose, first of all, the works that deal with the
mentioned conquest were introduced and then
chronograms found in the divans of this period for this
event were evaluated. In the last part of the article, a mathnawi written by a poet pennamed Râzî with the intent
of dating this conquest will be presetend with its
intralingual translation into modern Turkish.
Keywords
The conquest of Peloponnese (in 1715), chronogram, Râzî, classical Turkish literature.