The provided source, "The Pen's Grand Seraglio: A Survey of the Written Styles of Ottoman Turkish," explores the complex nature of Ottoman Turkish from its origins around 1300 to its dissolution in 1928. It highlights the language's tripartite structure, including the elite Fasih Türkçe, the everyday Kaba Türkçe, and the mediating Orta Türkçe, reflecting the empire's social hierarchy. The document then examines Ottoman literary traditions, with a significant focus on Divan poetry and various prose forms like travelogues and biographical dictionaries. Furthermore, it details the revered art of Ottoman calligraphy (hüsn-i hat), discussing key scripts such as Naskh, Thuluth, Ta'liq, Divani, and Ruq'ah, along with unique calligraphic genres like Tughra and Hilya. Finally, the text explains the radical language reforms of the early Turkish Republic, which replaced the Perso-Arabic script with a Latin alphabet and purged many loanwords, effectively severing modern Turkish from its Ottoman past.
This page was created on: July 08, 2025