Editing Ottoman Empire (section)

=== Literature ===
{{Main|Ottoman literature}}

The two primary streams of Ottoman written literature are poetry and [[prose]]. Poetry was by far the dominant stream. The earliest work of Ottoman historiography for example, the [[Iskendername|''İskendernâme'']], was composed by the poet [[Taceddin Ahmedi]].<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Kastritsis |first=Dimitris J. |title=The sons of Bayezid: empire building and representation in the Ottoman civil war of 1402-1413 |date=2007 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-15836-8 |series=The Ottoman empire and its heritage |location=Leiden ; Boston |pages=33–37}}</ref> Until the 19th century, Ottoman prose did not contain any examples of fiction: there were no counterparts to, for instance, the European [[Chivalric romance|romance]], short story, or novel. Analog genres did exist, though, in both [[Turkish folk literature]] and in [[Diwan (poetry)|Divan poetry]].

Ottoman Divan poetry was a highly ritualized and symbolic art form. From the [[Persian literature|Persian poetry]] that largely inspired it, it inherited a wealth of symbols whose meanings and interrelationships—both of similitude ({{lang|ota|مراعات نظير}} {{transliteration|ota|mura'ât-i nazîr}} / {{lang|ota|تناسب}} {{transliteration|ota|tenâsüb}}) and opposition ({{lang|ota|تضاد}} {{transliteration|ota|tezâd}}) were more or less prescribed. Divan poetry was composed through the constant juxtaposition of many such images within a strict metrical framework, allowing numerous potential meanings to emerge. The vast majority of Divan poetry was [[Lyric poetry|lyric]] in nature: either [[gazel]]s (which make up the greatest part of the repertoire of the tradition), or kasîdes. But there were other common genres, especially the mesnevî, a kind of [[Courtly romance|verse romance]] and thus a variety of [[narrative poetry]]; the two most notable examples of this form are the [[Leyli and Majnun (Fuzuli)|Leyli and Majnun]] of [[Fuzuli (poet)|Fuzuli]] and the [[Hüsn ü Aşk]] of [[Şeyh Gâlib]]. The [[Seyahatnâme]] of [[Evliya Çelebi]] (1611–1682) is an outstanding example of travel literature.

[[File:Nedim (divan edb.şairi).JPG|thumb|[[Nedîm|Ahmet Nedîm Efendi]], one of the most celebrated Ottoman poets|upright]]

Until the 19th century, [[Prose of the Ottoman Empire|Ottoman prose]] did not develop to the extent that contemporary Divan poetry did. A large part of the reason was that much prose was expected to adhere to the rules of {{transliteration|ota|sec}} ({{lang|ota|سجع}}, also transliterated as {{transliteration|ota|seci}}), or [[rhymed prose]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Murat Belge |title=Osmanlı'da kurumlar ve kültür |publisher=İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları |date=2005 |isbn=978-975-8998-03-6 |page=389}}</ref> a type of writing descended from the Arabic [[saj']] that prescribed that between each adjective and noun in a string of words, such as a sentence, there must be a rhyme. Nevertheless, there was a tradition of prose in the literature of the time, though it was exclusively nonfictional. One apparent exception was [[Giritli Ali Aziz Efendi|Muhayyelât]] (''Fancies'') by [[Giritli Ali Aziz Efendi]], a collection of stories of the fantastic written in 1796, though not published until 1867. The first novel published in the Ottoman Empire was [[Vartan Pasha]]'s 1851 ''The Story of Akabi'' (Turkish: ''Akabi Hikyayesi''). It was written in Turkish but with [[Armenian language|Armenian]] script.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mignon |first=Laurent |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AbQZAQAAIAAJ |title=Neither Shiraz nor Paris: papers on modern Turkish literature |date=2005 |publisher=ISIS |isbn=978-975-428-303-7 |location=Istanbul |page=20 |quote=Those words could have been readily adopted by Hovsep Vartanyan (1813–1879), the author, who preferred to remain anonymous, of The Story of Akabi (Akabi Hikyayesi), the first novel in Turkish, published with Armenian characters in the same year as [[Hovhannes Hisarian|Hisarian]]'s novel. |access-date=17 January 2016 |archive-date=14 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230114151705/https://books.google.com/books?id=AbQZAQAAIAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Masters |first1=Bruce |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QjzYdCxumFcC |title=Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire |last2=Ágoston |first2=Gábor |date=2009 |publisher=Facts On File |isbn=978-1-4381-1025-7 |location=New York |page=440 |quote=Written in Turkish using the Armenian alphabet, the Akabi History (1851) by Vartan Pasha is considered by some to be the first Ottoman novel. |access-date=20 June 2015 |archive-date=14 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230114151705/https://books.google.com/books?id=QjzYdCxumFcC |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Pultar |first=Gönül |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KhiQAwAAQBAJ |title=Imagined identities: identity formation in the age of globalism |date=2013 |publisher=Syracuse University Press |isbn=978-0-8156-3342-6 |edition=First |location=[S.l.] |page=329 |quote=In fact, one of the first Turkish works of fiction in Western-type novel form, Akabi Hikayesi (Akabi's Story), was written in Turkish by Vartan Pasha (born Osep/Hovsep Vartanian/Vartanyan, 1813–1879) and published in Armenian characters in 1851. |access-date=17 January 2016 |archive-date=14 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230114151705/https://books.google.com/books?id=KhiQAwAAQBAJ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Gürçaglar |first1=Şehnaz |title=Tradition, Tension, and Translation in Turkey |last2=Paker |first2=Saliha |last3=Milton |first3=John |date=2015 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company |isbn=978-90-272-6847-1 |page=5 |quote=It is interesting that the first Ottoman novel in Turkish, Akabi Hikayesi (1851, Akabi's Story), was written and published in Armenian letters (for Armenian communities who read in Turkish) by Hovsep Vartanyan (1813–1879), known as Vartan Paşa, a leading Ottoman man of letters and journalist.}}</ref>

Due to historically close ties with France, [[French literature]] constituted the major Western influence on Ottoman literature in the latter half of the 19th century. As a result, many of the same movements prevalent in France during this period had Ottoman equivalents; in the developing Ottoman prose tradition, for instance, the influence of [[Romanticism]] can be seen during the Tanzimat period, and that of the [[Realism (arts)|Realist]] and [[Naturalism (literature)|Naturalist]] movements in subsequent periods; in the poetic tradition, on the other hand, the influence of the [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolist]] and [[Parnassianism|Parnassian]] movements was paramount.

Many of the writers in the Tanzimat period wrote in several different genres simultaneously. This diversity was, in part, due to Tanzimat writers' wish to disseminate as much of the new literature as possible, in the hopes that it would contribute to a revitalization of Ottoman [[social structure]]s.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Moran |first=Berna |title=Türk Romanına Eleştirel Bir Bakış Vol. 1 |date=1997 |isbn=978-975-470-054-1 |page=19|publisher=İletişim Yayınları }}</ref>