222 chapter 5
in Istanbul and served in the financial bureaucracy, being a protégé of Köprülü
Fazıl Ahmed Pasha. He was a polymath and an encyclopedist in the mold of
Kâtib Çelebi, and he made extensive use of Greek and Latin sources for his
historical works, with two dragomans as intermediaries (one of whom was
the famous Panayiotis Nikousios); his company was frequented by various
European orientalists, such as Antoine Galland and Count Marsigli. His works
are numerous; among lexicographical, moralist, medical, and mystical treatis-
es, his universal history (Tenkîh-i tevârîh-i mülûk), which included the history
of Rome, Ancient Greece, Byzantium, China, and Indonesia should be espe-
cially noted, as should a narrative of the discovery of the Americas.66 Hezarfen
composed some old-style moral-political treatises (Câmi’ü’l-hikâyât, Anîsü’l-
‘ârif în ve mürşîdü’s-sâlikîn),67 but his main “political” work was Telhîsü’l-beyân
bî kavânîn-i Âl-ı Osmân (“Memorandum on the rules of the House of Osman”).68
Composed in all probability around 1675,69 this remarkable treatise is supposed
to be an exposition of the history, institutions, and rules of the Ottoman state
in the model of Ayn Ali’s work or of Koçi Bey’s second treatise, and, indeed, the
sources Hezarfen used include these authors, as well as other regulations and
compilations of laws or fetvas. However, Hezarfen wished to give more than
an exposition of various institutions: he copies verbatim large parts of Kâtib
Çelebi’s works and Feridun Bey’s collection of correspondence, while he incor-
porates Lütfi Pasha’s Âsafnâme both partially, i.e. scattered across various parts
of his treatise, and as a whole.70
Hezarfen begins with a eulogy of Mehmed IV and explains that, because he
had described in such detail the rules of the Mongols and the Chinese in his
universal history, he was asked to do the same for the Ottoman state. His work
is formed of thirteen chapters (bab), the first of which deals with the history of
the Ottoman sultans, in short notices. The second chapter describes Istanbul
and its history, drawing from Greek sources (and explaining at great length
by Flügel, corroborated by Antoine Galland who knew Hezarfen personally) respectively;
İlgürel (Hezarfen – İlgürel 1998, 5 and 7–8) adopts Ménage’s date (1600) for his birth and
Mehmed Tahir’s (1678) for his death. According to Wurm (ibid.), Marsigli’s information
that Hezarfen had died by 1685 must be a mistake.
66 On Hezarfen’s life and work see Anhegger 1953; Wurm 1971; Hezarfen – İlgürel 1998, 4–13.
On certain aspects of his universal history cf. Bekar 2011.
67 Wurm 1971, 87, 98, 107.
68 Hezarfen – İlgürel 1998; cf. Anhegger 1953 for an earlier partial publication. See also Lewis
1962, 81–82; Wurm 1971, 102–105; Fodor 1986, 235; Yılmaz 2003a, 313; İnan 2009, 121–122.
69 The exact dating of this text is not certain, since various suggestions have been made
varying from A.H. 1080 (1669/70) up to A.H. 1086 (1675); see Hezarfen – İlgürel 1998, 13,
fn. 47 and cf. Wurm 1971, 102.
70 See Hezarfen – İlgürel 1998, 21–29 for a detailed analysis of sources.