Abstract
Cemali's Risâle-i Durûb-ı Emsâl
The beauty and virtue in proverbs which are the product
of folk wisdom, observation and experience attracted the
attention of many literary figures. Our poets and authors
used Turkish proverbs and idioms in verse or prose by
various proportions. It is a fact seen since the earliest
works of our literary history. In fact, due to the fact that
some poets excessively used proverbs and idioms, they were
characterized by “mesel-guy” (saying parable) and their
poems were defined by “mesel-amiz (covering parable)” in
the dictionaries of biographies of poets. Additionally, poets
and authors such as Güvahi, Muhammed bin Ahmed,
Levni gave spiritual, moral, social and cultural advices to
readers by proverbs and idioms.
Sufi poet-author Cemali who lived in the second half of
the 16th century wrote a verse advice booklet by classifying
Turkish proverbs and folk expression according to subject.
His work entitled “Risâle-i Durûb-ı Emsâl” (Booklet of
Proverbs) was written according to the Aruz rhytm
“mefâîlün mefâîlün feûlün” and it consists of 380 couplets.
It is understood that according to the result of comparison,
Cemâlî excessively benefited from Güvahi’s Pendnâme and
the poet got his many couplets with some changes. In this
article, firstly it was given brief information about
Cemâlî’s works; then Risâle-i Durûb-ı Emsâl was
introduced and the text
Keywords
Proverbs, verse, Cemali, Risâle-i Durûb-ı Emsâl, Güvahi, Pend-nâme.