Nergisi's Letters

Witnesses of Erudition and Talent

Abstract

Muhammad Nergisî, a well known writer in prose and poetry and a professional qadi, served in many Rumelian towns. His life goal was to move to the capital of the Empire, so he invested a great effort to impose his literary work on the audience. Therefore, he developed the correspondence with his friends and prominent persons in the state administration, and that correspondence, which is of the exquisite literary value, today is classified as the insha-prose. His sublime and lexically finely crafted style, imbued with rich meanings, was the subject of controversy and criticism of those who could not grasp his artistic idea. However, without any doubt, his talent and erudition made him a superb master of insha prose. A philological analysis of both his letters and the other literary writings is not enough, and a more thorough analysis of the text requires social observations and psychological insights into his life and personality in order to show the motivations and influences on the development of his literary and artistic potential. The activities and influence of the intellectual networks of the 17th century on a provincial author also need to be pointed at. This paper will present Nergisi's correspondence with Veysi, which acquired a peculiar expressivity through its functionally implanted verses.