Literary Patronage Tradition in Ḫamse of Alī Şīr Nevāyī:

The Example of Sedd-i İskenderī

Abstract

Alī Şīr Nevāyī (1441-1501), a famous poet of Turkish literature, wrote his works with a national language consciousness in the 15th century. He is a valuable figure, known not only in the lands where he was born and raised, but also throughout the Turkish world, and his fame has transcended the ages since the century in which he lived. Nevāyī enabled the formation and development of classical Chagatai literature with his more than thirty works, making very important contributions to the Turkish cultural world as a poet, scholar, and statesman. Among his works, his “ḫamse”, which he wrote between 1483 and 1485, has a special place as it is the first of its kind in Turkish literature, standing before us as a rich source that can further the studies on the poet’s art and world of thought. In addition to being patronized by important statesmen of his time, Nevāyī was also among the figures who undertook the patronage of art and artists. When ḫamse is viewed from this perspective, it becomes clear that the poet made various assessments about the literary patronage he gave importance to throughout his life. As a matter of fact, it has been determined that Nevāyī, although he occasionally touches on the subject of literary patronage in his meṩnevīs in his ḫamse, expresses his thoughts on the subject by dealing with the topic of himmet in a separate section in his Sedd-i İskenderī (Alexander’s Wall) meṩnevī, which he wrote in 1485. With this study, we aim to examine the thoughts of Nevāyī on literary patronage by presenting examples from the sections and couplets in this work in order to to contribute to research on literary patronage.