Family in Nâbî’s Work Hayriyye

Abstract

In the Ottoman Empire, there were a lot of people who belong to different nations and religions. So, there were a lot of family structures. For understanding Ottoman's family, we have to study about these religions' and nations' thought about family structures. Also, we can use books written by Ottoman's intellectuals. Nâbî's "Hayriye" is one of them. Yûsuf Nâbî is from Urfa and he is one of the most well-known poets in the 17th century. He is the pioneer of hikemî style in the divan poetry. He wrote a lot of books. Some of them are: "Turkish Divan, Persian Divançe, Hayriyye, Hayrâbâd, Sûr-name, Terceme-i Hadîs-i Erba'în, Fetih-name-i Kamaniçe" and "Zeyl-i Siyer-i Veysî". Yûsuf Nâbî wrote his book "Hayriyy"e for his son Ebu'l-Hayr. This book is a kind of mesnevi and it has got 1647 couplets. "Hayriye" is an advice book; so, it is a didactic work. But, it is more than an advice book. Yûsuf Nâbî criticizes social and political issues in the book. However, his criticism is veiled because public was under political pressure. So, Yûsuf Nâbî couldn't criticize society and politics openly. On one hand Yûsuf Nâbî gives some advices to his son Ebu'l-Hayr to what he should do in the future about life, on the other hand he criticise society and politics. One of the main issues of "Hayriye" is family. Yûsuf Nâbî gives a lot of advices to his son about family. Nâbî gives advices about how Ebu'l-Hayr should choose his wife and how he should get married. Also, Nâbî gives some opinions about features of ideal female slave, children's stiuation in the family and sex. In this article, we will search Nâbî's thought about family. For this aim, we will use "Hayriye". There are two questions which we want to search: What does Nâbî think about family and why does he think like that? There are three basic subjects in this article: 1) Marriage, 2) Continuation of Generation, 3) Members of Family.