Article

Mahrami's (d. 942/1535) Persian Work Titled Majma al-Latayif

Abstract

Short, impressive, sometimes laughable and often lecturing and exemplary little anecdotes telling about interesting events experienced by famous people are called latife. One of our poets and writers who wrote latife in the Ottoman period is Mahrami. Mahrami prepared his work in Persian, which he called Majma al-Latayif, by collecting the latifes described in the councils of the Ajam sultans and narrated by Saadi Shirazi and some Ajam humorists. There are 56 couplets and 6 lines in this work, which includes 50 latife mixed in verse and prose. The latifes in the work are about Saadi Shirazi, Sultan Yakub, Lutfullah Nishapuri, Fettahi Nishapuri, Mirza Baysungur, Molla Jami, Sultan Husayn Baykara, Ali Shir Navai, Hafez Shirazi, Ubayd Zakani and many others. Mahrami, who has little information about him, remembered the number of latife, his name and pseudonym in this work. Mahrami decided to prepare this work in a night assembly where latifes of Ubayd Zakani and entertaining stories in Jami’s Baharestan were read. Mahrami wrote this work to ensure that his name is mentioned in the assemblies and to help the humorists of the period reach latifes easily. In the manuscript that includes Mahrami’s Majma al-Latayif, there is another Majma al-Latayif, which includes 34 latife, two of which are in Turkish. It is not clear whether this work belongs to Mahrami or not. In this article, Mahrami’s work named Majma al-Latayif, which is in the Esad Efendi Collection of the Suleymaniye Library, is discussed for the first time.

Keywords

Mahrami Majma al-Latayif Latife Persian Latifes Ottoman Poet.