8vo (125 x 197 mm). 206 ff. (foliated in pencil 1-204 + 1 endpaper in an early 19th century hand). Ottoman Turkish manuscript on paper (largely polished paper, but including 18 leaves of silhouette paper with a floral pattern in pink and mint green) in several hands. Contemporary limp leather with remant impression of library chain. Handsome manuscript collection of the most important poets of the Ottoman classical period, including but not limited to Bâkî (1526-1600), Isa Necati (d. 1509), Muhammad ibn Sulaiman Fuzuli (1480-1556), Hayâlî (c.1500-57), and Yahya Efendi (1494-1570). The eighteen leaves of silhouetted paper are an important preservation of a popular but rarely preserved mediaeval and early modern book decoration practice. To dye silhouetted paper, Ottoman papermakers used stencils or pads of felt to bleed designs into the paper itself, creating a beautiful, airy impression of colour and pattern on which a scribe would write. These were high-cost, coveted items in both the East and the West. Perhaps consequently, this manuscript, likely produced in Western Anatolia, had by 1596 made its way to Silesian Breslau (Wroclaw), in what is now Poland. An elaborate librarian's inscription, dated and signed "G. Scheidt", identifies its new home as the library of the Church of St Mary Magdalene. - The inscription notes that the text was donated to the library by "Fridrich von Schliwicz und Klein Wandriß zu Zieserwicz". Friedrich von Schliewitz was a Silesian nobleman who gifted a total of five Turkish manuscripts to St Mary Magdalene Library in 1596, all of which received chains of libri catenati (the remnant punched hole of which is visible on the leather covers of this manuscript) and the elaborately painted crest commissioned by the library from Breslau painter Matthias Heintze (d. 1622). Georg Scheidt (d. 1601) was a teacher at the Mary Magdalene grammar school between 1569 and 1575 before becoming a librarian to the local church library (cf. Zeitschrift des Vereins p. 218, and Schönborn, p. 28). After his death he was replaced by Christoph Sarcephalus, who completed the inventory which forms the library's earliest known catalogue (cf. Garber, p. 568). - The present manuscript itself boasts numerous marginal notes in an early hand, as well as marginalia on fol. 109, depicting a horse in red ink. Covers a bit worn, some early paper repairs. In all a well-preserved and well-travelled early modern text. - Provenance: from the collection of the Turkish-German artist Nedim Sönmez (b. 1957), of Izmir, a specialist for decorated paper, to whom it belonged since 1988. Previously the manuscript had been in a private German collection in Bremen. Carl Brockelmann, Verzeichnis der arabischen, persischen, türkischen und hebräischen Handschriften der Stadtbibliothek zu Breslau, no. 31. Cf. Klaus Garber, Bücherhochburg des Ostens, in: Garber (ed.), Kulturgeschichte Schlesiens in der Frühen Neuzeit I, p. 568. Carl Schönborn, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Schule und des Gymnasiums zu St. Maria Magdalena in Breslau, p. 28. Zeitschrift des Vereins für Geschichte und Alterthum Schlesiens 13.13 (1876), p. 218.
