ARABIC-TURKISH DICTIONARY WRITTEN IN THE BALKANS
AKHTARĪ, Mustafā bin Shams al-Dīn al-Qarahisārī.
Akhtarī Kabīr.
[Margus, Ottoman Balkans, early nineteenth century.]
Arabic and Ottoman Turkish manuscript on paper (289 x 190 mm; text area 228 x 133 mm), ff. [269], [1 (blank)], written in a small, neat naskhī, 35 lines to the page, some words in red or overlined in red, text frame of gold, black and red rules; with an illuminated headpiece at the beginning of the text; some occasional smudging or soiling and some light dampstaining, minor wormtrack in lower outer corner of a few leaves, tiny wormhole in last few leaves, but generally in very good condition; bound in contemporary maroon morocco with flap, recessed cartouches and cornerpieces on covers containing gilt pressure-moulded floral and vegetal ornament; slightly rubbed and stained, old repairs to spine and to hinge of flap; erased seal impression and an erased inscription on f. 1r, seal impression on front free endpaper giving the name ‘Ayyub’ and the date 1281 [AH, i.e. 1864 AD].
A handsome copy of the important Arabic-Turkish dictionary known as Akhtarī Kabīr.
Akhtarī (d. 968 AH/1561 AD) compiled his dictionary at Kütahya in 1545. Entries are ‘listed in the sequence of the first root letters; the author arranged the lemmata in strict alphabetical order of the derived forms used in Turkish, rather than placing them under the trilingual Arabic root, as had been the usual practice in previous Arabic-Turkish dictionaries. Although Ahterī completed this dictionary in 952 AH/1545 AD, in his Turkish definitions he did not hesitate to use some Old Ottoman Turkish synonyms that were already rather rare.
He also gave many examples of the usage of the Arabic words in the form of quotations in Arabic. This dictionary was very popular for centuries and, in spite of its great size, many copies were made over a period of more than four centuries ... In his Arabic introduction, Ahterī names the following Arabic sources: “al-Jawharī’s Sihāh; al-Dustūr; al-Takmilah; al-Mujmal; al-Maghrib; al-Taqaddimah, and other reputable works” ... The dictionary was printed many times in the nineteenth and early twentieth century’ (Birnbaum, Ottoman Turkish and Çağatay MSS in Canada (2015), p. 354).
This copy is signed by one Ahmad bin Muhammad bin ‘Ali, who describes himself as a preacher in the Old Mosque of Margus, i.e. present-day Požarevac in eastern Serbia.
GAL S II, p. 630.
