Note to the Reader
For the sake of consistency, all Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish titles of historical works, the names of their authors, and original quotations have been transcribed. Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian words have been transcribed according to the International Journal of Middle East Studies system, with the exception that in Ottoman Turkish words ḫ has been used for خ and h for ە. Persian words follow the Arabic transcription system, but their slight variations in pronunciation have been taken into consideration. The titles of historical works have been transcribed in accordance with the language of composition.
All personal names and technical terms are also fully transcribed. For the sake of convenience and legibility, however, words that appear in English dictionaries have been Anglicized unless they appear as part of an individual’s name. Place names have been given in their modern and commonly accepted Anglicized forms.
Names of individuals are followed by their year of death (d.), regnal years (r.), or, for authors, the years during which their literary activities flourished (fl.) if their dates of death are unknown. When dates of death or activity have not been fully established, several dates or a range of dates (ca.) are given. Unless otherwise specified, dates follow the Gregorian calendar.
In an effort to present a translation that is both faithful to the original and as reader-friendly as possible, I endeavored to establish that elusive balance between literal and idiomatic styles of translation. To that end, I made certain decisions that are reflected in both the style and the structure of the translated text.
Not unlike numerous other historical texts composed in Ottoman Turkish, Saʿdeddīn Efendi’s Selīmnāme frequently shifts between the past and the present tense, a convention intended to add dynamism to the narrative. While I retained the original tense of practically all reported speech throughout the text, for the sake of readibility I rendered the remainder of the narrative in the past tense.
I also maintained, to the extent possible, the variegated language the author used to refer to superiors (e.g., the sultan) and inferiors (e.g., himself). I am aware that a phrase like “this humble servant,” often used by Selīmnāme’s protagonists when referring to themselves, may sound unwieldy to the modern reader. However, because rendering such constructions in the first-person singular as “I” or “me” felt simplistic, if not anachronistic, I opted to keep the register of humility of the original text.
Selīmnāme is quite a lively narrative. It recounts numerous conversations between multiple interlocutors, which Saʿdeddīn preferred to relay in direct speech. To remain faithful to the original text, I retained the author’s style and marked direct speech with double quotation marks. In cases where the speech of one speaker encapsulated that of another, I relied on nested quotations, switching between double and single quotation marks.