Ottoman Culture

“The Musical ‘Renaissance’ of Late Seventeenth Century Ottoman Turkey: Reflections on the Musical Materials of Ali Ufki Bey (ca. 1610-1675), Hafiz Post (d. 1694), and the ‘Maraghi’ Repertoire,” in Greve, M. (eds.), Writing the History of Ottoman Music, Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2015: 87-138.

The article explores evidence for the emergence of the antecedents of the Ottoman musical repertoire not earlier than the second half of the 17th century. It suggests the historical causes for the creation of a 'pseudo graphic' corpus attributed to the Iranian Abdul Qader Meraghi (d. 1435), as an internally understood mythological 'lineage' of musicians, rather than an actual history. The situation of music in Safavid Iran is also treated where relevant to the contemporary Ottoman issues.

Myths as a product of common culture are the stories that each culture takes and kneads within itself and conveyed for generations. The source for them is human. Myths are shaped by the culture, lifestyle and beliefs of communities. Mythology has a great place in making sense of literary texts as it is in human history. Mythological narratives and items, which have changed as a result of the interaction of different cultures with each other, are cultural accumulations whose origins cannot be determined exactly, but which are believed to be true by the society. One of the fields that divan poetry, which continues as a literary tradition, makes use of while maintaining its existence is mythology. Various mythological elements in literary works play an important role in understanding the meaning of the work. Divan poetry, mostly fed by the source of Persian mythology, also benefited from the mythological animals belonging to this culture. Among mythological animals, birds are considered as mythological elements that occupy much of divan poetry. Kaknus, the subject of our study, is a mythological bird with a story in both western and eastern mythology. In Greek mythology, the mythological person Kyknos is a bird named Kaknus in Persian mythology. In this study, the mythological history of Kaknus will be discussed and the characteristics of its use in Divan poetry will be detailed.