Alexander Romances and the Fifteenth Century Ottoman Sultanate A dis

281 Pages·2017·1.7 MB·English

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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Mirrors of the World: Alexander Romances and the Fifteenth Century Ottoman Sultanate
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1k61d921
Author
Beaudoen, Lee Andre
Publication Date
2017

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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Mirrors of the World:

Alexander Romances and the Fifteenth Century Ottoman Sultanate

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy
in History

by

Lee Andre Beaudoen

2017
ã Copyright by

Lee Andre Beaudoen

2017
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Mirrors of the World: Alexander Romances and the Fifteenth Century Ottoman Sultanate

by

Lee Andre Beaudoen
Doctor of Philosophy in History
University of California, Los Angeles, 2017
Professor Michael G. Morony, Chair
Beginning in the third century BCE, just after the death of the Alexander III of Macedon, a
series of historical and romanticized narratives begin to circulate that told the tale of his life,
adventures, and military career. These textual representatives were only one aspect of a broader
category of Alexandriana – the textual, visual, material and folkloric representations – that
highlighted the deeds of Alexander the Great. Textural representations of Alexandriana spread
throughout the Mediterranean, Middle East, and Central Asia, and were rendered into a broad
range of languages including, Greek, Syriac, Hebrew, Ethiopic, Mongolian, Persian and Ottoman
Turkish. Previous readings of Ahmedi’s fifteenth-century Ottoman Turkish rending of the
Iskendername have correctly placed it as part of the nisahatname ‘mirrors for princes’ genre, but
have underplayed its role in the almost two-millennia tradition of the Alexander Romance cycle.
This oversight missed several opportunities to investigate Ottoman participation in the long
durée of Mediterranean cultural continuity of the Alexander Romance tradition. Furthermore, the
beginning of the fifteenth century offered a narrative link between the Ottoman and Alexandrine
historical contexts that has been overlooked thus far. Equally important, the Ottoman Civil war
and Wars of the Diadochi offered an opportunity for understanding the role of the Alexander
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narrative in the fifteenth century Ottoman context. Mid-fifteenth century association and
emulation of Alexander the Great provided both narrative links between Mehmed the Conqueror
and Alexander the Great. Such links re-shaped a “Mediterraneaninzed” Ottoman imperial
paradigm that sought – if only ephemerally—to re-unite the Mediterranean world under the
Ottoman standard. Translatio imperii was encapsulated within both the Alexandrine and
Ottoman narratives and represented not a single context but several distinct contexts (trans-
imperial, geographic, intra-dynastic and inter dynastic translatio imperii) which highlighted a
series of circumstantial parallelisms (Narrative, Person, Place and Event) between these two
narratives. This significance of Ottoman participation in the broader Mediterranean cultural
world represented a major step in a cultural continuity and Mediterranean cultural unity that both
shows the Ottoman relationship with the distant past and its entry into the early modern world as
a major world empire.
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The dissertation of Lee Andre Beaudoen is approved.

Gabriel Piterberg

Teofilo F. Ruiz

Domenico Ingenito

Michael G. Morony, Chair

University of California, Los Angeles

2017

iv
For my parents, Linda M. Tremblay and Fred V. Beaudoen,

who have always proudly supported me.

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Mirrors of the World: Alexander Romances and the Fifteenth Century
Sultanate

Table of Contents

From Babylon to Konstantoniyye: Linking the Ancient with the Early Modern 1

Chapter 1 – “To the Strongest” - Alexandriana The Romances and Histories 25

Chapter 2 – Jamshid’s Cup and Alexander’s Mirror (Jām-e Jam ve ‘Ayina-i 69
Iskandari): The Persian Romance Tradition

Chapter 3 - From the Argaead to the Ottoman Narrative: Connections 113
between Fifteenth Century Ottoman Reality and Fourth Century Alexandrine
Reality

Chapter 4 - Translatio Imperii: Transitions of Power in the Fifteenth 150
Century Ottoman Context

Chapter 5 - The Mirror of the World: Circumstantial parallelism and the 184
Fifteenth Century Ottoman Stake in Textual Alexandriana

Chapter 6 - Final Conclusions 208

Appendix A – Berzunza’s Alexandriana 217

Appendix B - Summary of Ottoman Textual Alexandriana Currently Housed 223
in the Süleymaniye Library

Bibliography 233

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Acknowledgements

This dissertation has been an incredible experience of growth from which I have learned volumes.
Through it I have grown as an academic and scholar, writer, historian, linguist, and person. Mirrors of the
World raises questions about the Ottoman fifteenth century and its relationship to antiquity. Some of these
questions I have I answered, some I hope to continue to answer in the future, and some I hope others will
answer. This project could have been completed without the assistance and support of the many mentors,
colleagues, peers, family and friends whom I have encountered in the process.
It has been a great pleasure to have worked with my advisor Professor Michael Morony and the
members of my committee: Gabriel Piterberg, Teofilo Ruiz and Domenico Ingenito. I leave UCLA
enriched from their inspiration, insight, patience, and erudition.
I am grateful to Linda Darling for her time, encouragement, and inspiration in this project.
I am also grateful to those within the UCLA community who contributed to shaping me as a scholar
during my tenure at UCLA: John Langdon, James Gelvin, Nile Green, Peter Stacy and S. Peter Cowe.
I am grateful to those from outside the UCLA community who have contributed to this project by
lending an ear, giving a suggestion, or showing their support in its the earliest stages and throughout:
Selim Kuru (University of Washington), Reşat Kasaba (University of Washington), Ciğdem Kafesciğlu
(Boğaziçi University), Claudia Rapp (University of Vienna), Gönül Tekin, Anthony Greenwood (ARIT),
and David Durand-Guedy.
My thanks go out to my colleagues at Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Studies
(RCAC) who provided both funding and an excellent environment to research, discuss ideas, and draft
much of this material during my tenure there as a Junior Residence Fellow from 2015-2016. I am
particularly grateful to Chris Roosevelt, Buket Coskuner, and Mehmet Kentel for their support.
I am also grateful to the librarians and staff at the Suleymaniye Library, ELTE Medieval, CEU, YRL,
and ARIT for their assistance while conduction the research for this dissertation. My gratitude also goes
out to those in History Department at CEU who welcomed me as part of the dissertation support program
and made the completion of this project abroad possible: Dr. Aziz al-Azmeh and Dr. Tolga Esmer.
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I would like to extent special thanks to my writing partner, colleague, and friend Dr. Serena Love
who read every chapter of this dissertation, pushed me to get the next words onto the page, and held me to
my writing goals. My thanks go out to all my peers and colleagues who have encouraged, challenged and
supported me through these years, especially to Dr. Marlena Whiting and the imminent Dr. Daniel
Fittante. Your conversations and words of encouragement went miles in helping me bring this phase of
the project to a close.
To my amazing family, Linda, Marlise, David, Aria, and Misha who have supported and encouraged
me to chase this dream.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge those who supported me unquestioningly during the early years of
graduate school both in Seattle and Los Angeles but who did not see this project’s completion: Fred
Beaudoen and Brent Garback.

To all of you I am Grateful.

Lee A. Beaudoen
Budapest, Hungary
18, May 2017

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