Mustafa Sâmî Arpaemînizâde (d. 1734)

Dîvân-ı Sâmî

Būlāq, Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Ṣāḥib al-Saʿāda al-Abadiyya, late Rabīʿ al-ākhir 1253 AH [1837].

The edition comprises three separately paginated divisions: 104, 47 and 67 pages. Ottoman Turkish text, with Persian poems. Ruled verse compartments and ornamental section headings.

Brown quarter-leather over marbled-paper boards; yellow endpapers.

Blue ink ownership stamp and a magenta manuscript mark at the front; manuscript annotations, including an entry on the rear endpaper.

A Būlāq printing of the verse of Mustafa Sâmî, an Ottoman administrator, calligrapher and official chronicler. His bureaucratic career culminated in service as court historiographer under Mahmud I. The Dîvân represents another aspect of that career: a cultivated literary language in which poetic address, reflection and the commemoration of events drew upon a shared Persianate vocabulary.

Sâmî’s work is associated with the elaborate imagery and intellectual compression of the style known as Sebk-i Hindî. His poetry responds to earlier Turkish and Persian poets while pursuing demanding combinations of image and meaning. Fatma Sabiha Kutlar Oğuz places him between Nâʾilî and Şeyh Gâlib, and notes his influence on later writers including Namık Kemal. The Būlāq edition carried this early eighteenth-century poetic inheritance into a new nineteenth-century printed form.

The final colophon names Būlāq and late Rabīʿ al-ākhir 1253 AH. Ruled verse and decorated headings organise poems and larger divisions, carrying established conventions of literary reading into print. Research on Ottoman typography places such books within a wider negotiation between calligraphic models and typographic production. This copy’s ownership marks and manuscript entries record subsequent use, although their authors remain unidentified.

Condition

Binding rubbed, with worn edges and bumped corners. Pale dampstaining and tide lines, extending into the text on the final leaves. Scattered spotting, more pronounced on the outer leaves, with small corner losses and folds.

References

• Kutlar Oğuz, Fatma Sabiha. “Sâmî, Arpaemîni-zâde Mustafâ.” Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 2013. Updated 2021. Source
• Kutlar Oğuz, Fatma Sabiha, editor. Arpaemîni-zâde Mustafa Sâmî Dîvânı. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, 2017. Source
• “Dîvân (Sâmî).” Türk Edebiyatı Eserler Sözlüğü. Source
• Yazıcıgil, Onur Fatih, and Borna Izadpanah. “Crafting Global Typography: Origins, Dissemination, and Adaptation of Naskh Types from Istanbul.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 36, no. 3, 2026, pp. 503–42. First published online 30 Apr. 2026. Source

Artem reference: 211.