Abstract
A NEW MAWLID FROM THE XV CENTURY: LUTFÎ'S MAWLID
The word mawlid, which literally means “birth”, “date of birth”, “place of birth”, has expanded over time and has become a literary genre that covers works about the birth and life of Prophet Muhammad. The genre, the first examples of which we encounter in Arabic literature, began its course in Turkish literature in the XV. century. Almost all of the Turkish mawlid texts in many libraries in Turkey and abroad have been studied and introduced to the scientific world. The subject of this study, the Mawlid of a poet named Lütfî, has not been mentioned in the studies conducted so far, and a Mawlid poet named Lütfî has not been mentioned. The manuscript is the Turkish Mawlid text with catalog number “Birnbaum MSS Turkish 00084” in the Thomas Fisher Rare Manuscripts section of the University of Toronto Library in Canada. The work, which consists of 113 leaves and 2901 couplets, is the longest mawlid text among Turkish mawlids after Ahmed's Mawlid. The text, which shows the sound, form, vocabulary and orthography characteristics of the XVth century Old Oghuz Turkish, is written in nesih with movement. Compared to other Turkish mawlid texts on the creation of the glory of the Prophet Muhammad, his birth, his beautiful morals and qualities, his prophethood, his miraculous ascension, and his death, Lütfî's Mawlid is one of the best examples of the Turkish mawlid genre.
Keywords
Lütfî, Mawlid, Old Oghuz Turkish, Islamic Turkish Literature, Sufism