section_path: Culture/Literature
section_name: Literature
paragraph_text: Literature
  
  The two primary streams of Ottoman written literature are poetry and prose. Poetry was by far the dominant stream. The earliest work of Ottoman historiography for example, the İskendernâme, was composed by the poet Taceddin Ahmedi (1334–1413). Until the 19th century, Ottoman prose did not contain any examples of fiction: there were no counterparts to, for instance, the European romance, short story, or novel. Analog genres did exist, though, in both Turkish folk literature and in Divan poetry.
  
  Ottoman Divan poetry was a highly ritualized and symbolic art form. From the Persian poetry that largely inspired it, it inherited a wealth of symbols whose meanings and interrelationships—both of similitude (مراعات نظير mura'ât-i nazîr / تناسب tenâsüb) and opposition (تضاد tezâd) were more or less prescribed. Divan poetry was composed through the constant juxtaposition of many such images within a strict metrical framework, allowing numerous potential meanings to emerge. The vast majority of Divan poetry was lyric in nature: either gazels (which make up the greatest part of the repertoire of the tradition), or kasîdes. But there were other common genres, especially the mesnevî, a kind of verse romance and thus a variety of narrative poetry; the two most notable examples of this form are the Leyli and Majnun of Fuzuli and the Hüsn ü Aşk of Şeyh Gâlib. The Seyahatnâme of Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682) is an outstanding example of travel literature.
  
  Until the 19th century, Ottoman prose did not develop to the extent that contemporary Divan poetry did. A large part of the reason was that much prose was expected to adhere to the rules of sec (سجع, also transliterated as seci), or rhymed prose, a type of writing descended from the Arabic saj' that prescribed that between each adjective and noun in a string of words, such as a sentence, there must be a rhyme. Nevertheless, there was a tradition of prose in the literature of the time, though it was exclusively nonfictional. One apparent exception was Muhayyelât (Fancies) by Giritli Ali Aziz Efendi, a collection of stories of the fantastic written in 1796, though not published until 1867. The first novel published in the Ottoman Empire was Vartan Pasha 's 1851 The Story of Akabi (Turkish: Akabi Hikyayesi). It was written in Turkish but with Armenian script.
  
  Due to historically close ties with France, French literature constituted the major Western influence on Ottoman literature in the latter half of the 19th century. As a result, many of the same movements prevalent in France during this period had Ottoman equivalents; in the developing Ottoman prose tradition, for instance, the influence of Romanticism can be seen during the Tanzimat period, and that of the Realist and Naturalist movements in subsequent periods; in the poetic tradition, on the other hand, the influence of the Symbolist and Parnassian movements was paramount.
  
  Many of the writers in the Tanzimat period wrote in several different genres simultaneously; for instance, the poet Namık Kemal also wrote the important 1876 novel İntibâh (Awakening), while the journalist İbrahim Şinasi is noted for writing, in 1860, the first modern Turkish play, the one-act comedy Şair Evlenmesi (The Poet's Marriage). An earlier play, a farce titled Vakâyi'-i 'Acibe ve Havâdis-i Garibe-yi Kefşger Ahmed (The Strange Events and Bizarre Occurrences of the Cobbler Ahmed), dates from the beginning of the 19th century, but there is doubt about its authenticity. In a similar vein, the novelist Ahmed Midhat Efendi wrote important novels in each of the major movements: Romanticism (Hasan Mellâh yâhud Sırr İçinde Esrâr, 1873; Hasan the Sailor, or The Mystery Within the Mystery), Realism (Henüz on Yedi Yaşında, 1881; Just Seventeen Years Old), and Naturalism (Müşâhedât, 1891; Observations). This diversity was, in part, due to Tanzimat writers' wish to disseminate as much of the new literature as possible, in the hopes that it would contribute to a revitalization of Ottoman social structures.