Or 14087

This volume contains Ottoman Turkish and Persian ornate poems illustrating numerous poetical devices. The folio comprising the present volume originally formed part or the whole of three separate manuscripts of various sizes and dates.

(I) ff 1v-4r : Levami'ü'l-belaga fi matali' il-fasaha, a brief but spectacularly ornate kaside in Ottoman Turkish by Lami'i Çelebi (died 938 AH/1531-32 CE, or the previous year). This text is undated, but was likely copied in the late 17th century or early 18th century CE ;

(II) ff 5r-6v : Verses from two ornate qaṣā'id in Persian (excerpts only). Both examples are incomplete. A folio is probably wanting from the beginning as there is no title or heading. There is also a lacuna, with probably two folios lost, between ff 5 and 6. The first poem is the famous qaṣīdah of the 12th century CE poet Qivāmī of Ganja (contemporary Azerbaijan). The second Persian qaṣīdah, not readily identifiable, also rhymes in –ār. This text is also undated, but was likely copied in the 16th or 17th century CE ;

(III) ff 7v-14v : Kaside der sanayı-yi şi'riye, another ornate kaside in Ottoman Turkish, but with a preface in Persian, in which the author describes his poem (f 8r, top line) as a nazire of Qivāmī's Persian qaṣīdah in text II. He is Hümami-yi İzniki, who was among the court poets of Sultans Mehmet I and Murat II, and this poem is dedicated to the latter monarch (reigned 824-55 AH/1421-51 CE). This text was copied in 939 AH (1532-33 CE).

A number of the folios within this volume show evidence of damp staining.

Other contents of the work include: a contents inscription (f 1r); a passage from an Arabic work concerning a detailed point of ṭahārah (ritual purity) (f 6v); and brief prose passages in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic, added later apparently as examples of sec' (rhyming prose).