Sinan Seyhi

Şeyhi, Sinan 

Born 1370’s in Kütahya; died 1422 or 1431 in Dumlupinar. Turkish poet. One of the founders of the secular mathnawi (long narrative poem consisting of rhymed distichs) in medieval Turkish literature.

Şeyhi was educated in medicine in Iran. He was the court physician of Sultan Mahmud I and the pupil and friend of the poet Ahmedi. He was the author of a divan of lyric poems that included ghazals, qasidas, and rubais. He became famous for his narrative poem Khusrau and Shirin, a “reply” to Nizami’s poem of the same name, and for his Book of an Ass, one of the earliest works of medieval Turkish satire. Şeyhi was the first Turkish writer to use aruz, a complex system of versification borrowed from classical Persian poetry.

REFERENCES

Garbuzova, V. S. Poety srednevekovoi Turtsii. Leningrad, 1963.
Mashtakova, E. I. Iz istorii satiry i iumora v turetskoi literature. Moscow, 1972. Pages 62–82.
Gibb, E. J. W. A History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 1. London, 1900. Pages 299–335.
Bombaci, A. Histoire de la littérature turque. Paris, 1968. Page 255.