1882 — Very Good Turkish, Ottoman (1500-1928) Original cloth bdg. with marbled boards and brown cloth spine. Fading on spine and foxing on boards and pages. Overall a good copy. Roy. 8vo. (24 x 17 cm). In Ottoman script (Old Turkish with Arabic letters). 118 p. Lithographed. Early edition of this rare poem collection by Leyla Hanim (?-1847), who was a few female poets in the Ottoman literature, known for her lyrical love poems. Divan literature is described as "a certain tradition literature with its rules and boundaries" in the most general form. These rules and boundaries have enabled the formation of common expressions in religion and in Sufi intellection in particular and in poetry by the influence of Persian literature, and they have made it traditional in time. In this context, in classical Turkish poetry, whose male poets are predominant in quality and quantity, patriarchal rhetoric presents an outlook that its frame has been established by common tropes, metaphors, poetic themes, and in short by similar imaginations and ideas. The divans of Lady Mihri (died after 1512), Lady Leyla (died in 1848), and Lady Seref (1809-1861) have different aesthetic understandings in that context. Leylâ Hanim was one of the few Turkish female poets who made a collection of her poems. Lived in Istanbul and died in 1848. Her family was close to the Ottoman Sultanate and Leylâ Hanim, witnessing the reign of Sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839) and Sultan Abdülmecid I (1839-1861). She is the daughter of Moralizâde Hâmid Efendi. Her mother Hadîce Hanim is the sister of Keçecizâde Izzet Molla, a notable bureaucrat, and poet of the times. She has three brothers, Atâullah Mehmed Efendi, Nurullah Mehmed Efendi and Hâlid Efendi, who died at a young age. She had financial problems after her father's death and she expressed those in her poems. Some of her poems in the divan mention that her father and brother Hâlid Efendi have lived in Bursa for a while. She is educated by Keçecizâde Izzet Molla, she is quick-witted. She experienced a short marriage, which lasted about a week; after the divorce, she devoted herself to poetry. Her grave is in Galata Mevlevîhanesi. Several books include information of her life, characteristics, and poetry such as Fatin Tezkiresi (363), Ahmet Rif'at's Lugat-i Târîhiyye ve Cogrâfiyye (154), Tuhfe-i Nâ'ilî (895), Sicill-i Osmânî (93), Bursali Mehmet Tahir's Osmanli Müellifleri (406), et alli. These resources indicate that Leylâ Hanim is from a noble family and the links of the family to the high cadres of Ottoman bureaucracy and their intellectual property have left traces in her poetry. AH 1299 = AD 1882. (Source: All poetry). OCLC 949496080.; Özege 4177 / 4. First two editions were printed in Cairo.
