Persian Idiom, Ottoman Meanings: Introducing Kemālpaşazāde’s Nigāristān

Although Kemālpaşazāde (875–940/1468–1534) is recently being rediscovered for his works on lexicography and orthodox Sunnism in its Ottoman iteration, the strictly ‘literary’ output of the early modern polymath has not yet received its due attention. This paper seeks to introduce his literary masterpiece, the Persian language Nigāristān, composed only months before the demise of the şeyḫülislām, and situate his text in relation to Saʿdī’s Gulistān and the Bahāristān of his Timurid contemporary ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī. I first seek to problematise ‘dislocative nationalistic’ discourse that writes-off Kemālpaşazāde’s and similar works on the basis of a perceived lack of stylistic originality. I then investigate Kemālpaşazāde’s choice of naming the text, and what this may tell us about China’s vogue in his time, his metaphysical system, and ideas inherited from Jāmī’s legacy on ‘literary millennialism.’ Then, building on the intertextual analyses of Paul Losensky, Benedek Péri and Murat Umut İnan on appraising Persianate texts through an ‘emulatory’ (rather than ‘imatatory’) lens, I demonstrate how Kemālpaşazāde’s reworking of narratives from the ‘canon’ of Persian writing both complicates and enriches the originals, in addition to reflecting his own erudition in the elsine-i ỿelāỿe, all whilst being imbued with contemporary Ottoman meanings.