Ahmed Bican
Encyclopedia
Ahmed Bican Yazıcıoğlu was an Ottoman
author most noted for his Dürr-i Meknûn
.
. Yazıcıoğlu came from a literary family. His father Salih Yazıcı, who moved to Gelibolu
(Gallipoli
) before Ahmed was born, and Ahmed's older brother Mehmed Yazıcıoğlu were writers before him and are both still well known.
Ahmed Bican Yazıcıoğlu and his brother were pupils of Hacı Bayram-ı Veli
who founded the Bayramiyye order
. They considered it their dervish
duty to spread knowledge among the common people. To accomplish this, they wrote in the language of their people, which was Turkish
. Ahmed Bican (Yazıcıoğlu just means the scribe) translated and compiled literature using original works from the then dominant scholarly language of Arabic. This religious act of translation has preserved important works for later generations and has caused him to become considered one of the most important figures of Ottoman culture. Besides translations, he also wrote some original works of his own. The famous legend about the founding of Istanbul
can be traced back to his Dürr-i Meknûn.
Yazıcıoğlu was highly productive as a writer and transcribed a number of popular religious and encyclopaedic works. His best known books today are the religious work Envârü’l- ‘âşıkîn and the Dürr-i Meknûn. He was probably able to accomplish these works by his religious lifestyle. His nickname 'Bican' is a term that means the lifeless, which refers to his ascetic dervish
lifestyle. He was an advocate of religious fasting and foregoing sleep.
The Dürr-i Meknûn approaches the world from the Creation according to cosmographic
tradition. Details about the heavenly bodies are followed by tales of ancient peoples, prophecies and divine punishments, discourses on stones, images, medicinal plants, mythical creatures, faraway countries, seas and islands with their bizarre inhabitants such as the cynocephali. The author concludes with a chapter about the terrors that await us at the end of the world
, including the islam
ic Antichrist
: the Dajjal
.
(Ken‘an), one of the sons of Nuh
(Noah
). Kenan refuses to join his father in the Ark
, and hopes to survive the Great Flood in a kind of diving bell
that he devises himself. God punishes him for his disobedience with a supernatural bladder infection and Ken'an drowns in his urine inside his own contraption.
writing of the word ‘Nikomedian
’) decided to build the city on a ‘wedge shaped’ plot of land, triangled between two sea arms. To make sure building activities would commence under an auspicious constellation, his astronomers
deviced a system of poles with bells and cords attached to them, to set the army of diggers, masons etc. to work at the same right time: “Alas, man proposes, God disposes.” A snake snatched by a local stork curled itself around the bird’s neck, thus causing it to fall out of the sky, against one of the bells, thereby setting on the entire enterprise in the most ominous of hours, that of the planet Mars
. Inevitably, the future of the city was to be rife with earthquakes, war and plagues.
This legend, partly a clever reworking of already existing elements in Byzantine tales and of Muslim views on Constantinople
reaching from the imperial to the apocalytic, deeply influenced Ottoman sentiments (quite a few felt the City to be intrinsically alien) and literature on this topic.
The grave monuments in Gelibolu
for Ahmed and Mehmed are tourist attractions.
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
author most noted for his Dürr-i Meknûn
Dürr-i Meknûn
Dürr-i meknûn, ‘The Hidden Pearl’ is a 15th century Ottoman Turkish cosmography in prose, traditionally attributed to Ahmed Bican . It is a compilation of highly divergent material, arranged in a time running from the Time Before Time to the aftermath of the Apocalypse...
.
Biography
Little is known of Yazıcıoğlu's life. His earliest biography was written by Mustafa ÂlîMustafa Ali
Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî bin Ahmed bin Abdülmevlâ Çelebi was an Ottoman historian and bureaucrat of Croatian ancestry. He wrote the earliest known biography of Ahmed Bican. He also wrote poetry and essays on religious and other subjects. Prof...
. Yazıcıoğlu came from a literary family. His father Salih Yazıcı, who moved to Gelibolu
Gelibolu
Gelibolu, also known as Gallipoli , is the name of a town and a district in Çanakkale Province of the Marmara region, located in Eastern Thrace in the European part of Turkey on the southern shore of the peninsula named after it on the Dardanelles strait, two miles away from Lapseki on the other...
(Gallipoli
Gallipoli
The Gallipoli peninsula is located in Turkish Thrace , the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles straits to the east. Gallipoli derives its name from the Greek "Καλλίπολις" , meaning "Beautiful City"...
) before Ahmed was born, and Ahmed's older brother Mehmed Yazıcıoğlu were writers before him and are both still well known.
Ahmed Bican Yazıcıoğlu and his brother were pupils of Hacı Bayram-ı Veli
Haci Bayram-i Veli
Hacı Bayram-ı Veli was an Turkish poet, a Sufi, and the founder of the Bayrami Sufi sect. He also composed a number of hymns.- His early life :...
who founded the Bayramiyye order
Bayramiye
Bayrami, Bayramiye, Bayramiyya, Bayramiyye, and Bayramilik refer toa Turkish Sufi order founded by Hajji Bayram in Ankara around the year 1400. The order spread to the then Ottoman capital Istanbul where there were several tekkes and into the Balkans...
. They considered it their dervish
Dervish
A Dervish or Darvesh is someone treading a Sufi Muslim ascetic path or "Tariqah", known for their extreme poverty and austerity, similar to mendicant friars in Christianity or Hindu/Buddhist/Jain sadhus.-Etymology:The Persian word darvīsh is of ancient origin and descends from a Proto-Iranian...
duty to spread knowledge among the common people. To accomplish this, they wrote in the language of their people, which was Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
. Ahmed Bican (Yazıcıoğlu just means the scribe) translated and compiled literature using original works from the then dominant scholarly language of Arabic. This religious act of translation has preserved important works for later generations and has caused him to become considered one of the most important figures of Ottoman culture. Besides translations, he also wrote some original works of his own. The famous legend about the founding of Istanbul
Byzantium
Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...
can be traced back to his Dürr-i Meknûn.
Yazıcıoğlu was highly productive as a writer and transcribed a number of popular religious and encyclopaedic works. His best known books today are the religious work Envârü’l- ‘âşıkîn and the Dürr-i Meknûn. He was probably able to accomplish these works by his religious lifestyle. His nickname 'Bican' is a term that means the lifeless, which refers to his ascetic dervish
Dervish
A Dervish or Darvesh is someone treading a Sufi Muslim ascetic path or "Tariqah", known for their extreme poverty and austerity, similar to mendicant friars in Christianity or Hindu/Buddhist/Jain sadhus.-Etymology:The Persian word darvīsh is of ancient origin and descends from a Proto-Iranian...
lifestyle. He was an advocate of religious fasting and foregoing sleep.
The Dürr-i Meknûn approaches the world from the Creation according to cosmographic
Cosmography
Cosmography is the science that maps the general features of the universe, describing both heaven and Earth...
tradition. Details about the heavenly bodies are followed by tales of ancient peoples, prophecies and divine punishments, discourses on stones, images, medicinal plants, mythical creatures, faraway countries, seas and islands with their bizarre inhabitants such as the cynocephali. The author concludes with a chapter about the terrors that await us at the end of the world
Eschatology
Eschatology is a part of theology, philosophy, and futurology concerned with what are believed to be the final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world or the World to Come...
, including the islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic Antichrist
Antichrist
The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to a leader who fulfills Biblical prophecies concerning an adversary of Christ, while resembling him in a deceptive manner...
: the Dajjal
Dajjal
al-Masih ad-Dajjal , is an evil figure in Islamic eschatology. He is to appear pretending to be Masih at a time in the future, before Yawm al-Qiyamah , directly comparable to the figures of the Antichrist and Armilus in Christian and Jewish eschatology, respectively.-Name: is a common Arabic word ...
.
Works
- Envârü’l- ‘âşıkîn (unclear: often 1451 is given, sometimes 1446, 1449, etc.)
- Dürr-i MeknûnDürr-i MeknûnDürr-i meknûn, ‘The Hidden Pearl’ is a 15th century Ottoman Turkish cosmography in prose, traditionally attributed to Ahmed Bican . It is a compilation of highly divergent material, arranged in a time running from the Time Before Time to the aftermath of the Apocalypse...
(year of writing unknown and much disputed) - Aca'ibu'l-mahlukatZakariya al-QazwiniAbu Yahya Zakariya' ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini , was a Persian physician, astronomer, geographer and proto-science fiction writer....
(1453) - Kitabü 'l-müntehã al müstehã ala 'l-fusûs (1465),
- Bostãnü 'l-hakã'ik (1466)
- Cevãhirnãme
- Ravhü 'l-ervãh
Dürr-i Meknûn
A remarkable passage in the Dürr-i Meknûn is Yazıcıoğlu’s fulminating against the deer- and spring-worshipping by Ottomans, a heathen cult within the empire. Another important passage in this book is a tale about KenanKenan
Kenan , , or Cainan, was a Biblical patriarch first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible Book of Genesis as living before the Great Flood.- Family :...
(Ken‘an), one of the sons of Nuh
Nuh
Noah, , is a prophet and messenger in the Qur'an. He is a highly important figure in Islamic history, as he is counted amongst the earliest prophets sent by God to mankind. According to Islam, Noah's mission was to a wicked world, plunged in depravity and sin...
(Noah
Noah
Noah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...
). Kenan refuses to join his father in the Ark
Noah's Ark
Noah's Ark is a vessel appearing in the Book of Genesis and the Quran . These narratives describe the construction of the ark by Noah at God's command to save himself, his family, and the world's animals from the worldwide deluge of the Great Flood.In the narrative of the ark, God sees the...
, and hopes to survive the Great Flood in a kind of diving bell
Diving bell
A diving bell is a rigid chamber used to transport divers to depth in the ocean. The most common types are the wet bell and the closed bell....
that he devises himself. God punishes him for his disobedience with a supernatural bladder infection and Ken'an drowns in his urine inside his own contraption.
Legend of the Foundation of Constantinople
The version of the legend of the Town’s foundation as Ottomans and Turks know it was coined by Ahmed Bican. According to this tale, Yanko bin Madyan (the name has its origin in a misspelling and or misreading in the Ottoman TurkishOttoman Turkish language
The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...
writing of the word ‘Nikomedian
Nicomedia
Nicomedia was an ancient city in what is now Turkey, founded in 712/11 BC as a Megarian colony and was originally known as Astacus . After being destroyed by Lysimachus, it was rebuilt by Nicomedes I of Bithynia in 264 BC under the name of Nicomedia, and has ever since been one of the most...
’) decided to build the city on a ‘wedge shaped’ plot of land, triangled between two sea arms. To make sure building activities would commence under an auspicious constellation, his astronomers
Astrology and astronomy
Astrology and astronomy were archaically one and the same discipline , and were only gradually recognized as separate in Western 17th century philosophy ....
deviced a system of poles with bells and cords attached to them, to set the army of diggers, masons etc. to work at the same right time: “Alas, man proposes, God disposes.” A snake snatched by a local stork curled itself around the bird’s neck, thus causing it to fall out of the sky, against one of the bells, thereby setting on the entire enterprise in the most ominous of hours, that of the planet Mars
Planets in astrology
Planets in astrology have a meaning different from the modern astronomical understanding of what a planet is. Before the age of telescopes, the night sky was thought to consist of two very similar components: fixed stars, which remained motionless in relation to each other, and wandering stars, ,...
. Inevitably, the future of the city was to be rife with earthquakes, war and plagues.
This legend, partly a clever reworking of already existing elements in Byzantine tales and of Muslim views on Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
reaching from the imperial to the apocalytic, deeply influenced Ottoman sentiments (quite a few felt the City to be intrinsically alien) and literature on this topic.
The grave monuments in Gelibolu
Gallipoli
The Gallipoli peninsula is located in Turkish Thrace , the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles straits to the east. Gallipoli derives its name from the Greek "Καλλίπολις" , meaning "Beautiful City"...
for Ahmed and Mehmed are tourist attractions.