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Huseyin Yilmaz: The Rise of Turkish as Hegemonic Language in the Ottoman Empire
What accounts for the rise of Turkish as the principal language of Ottoman high culture and government? In his lecture, Huseyin Yilmaz asks whether the ascendancy of Turkish was a foregone conclusion, because the Ottoman State was founded by and in the midst of a Turkic-speaking people.
If so, this does not explain the case of many other states, ranging from the Seljuks to the Moguls, that were founded in the context of similar demographic and linguistic settings but quickly adopted Persian or Arabic in administration, learning and literature. In pursuit of a plausible explanation for this historical development with far-reaching consequences, this presentation discusses one particular area: the translation movement of the fifteenth century and its aftermath, the reasons behind it, and its impact on Ottoman culture and society. Ottoman culture and learning of the time, in both oral and written forms, was truly translation-ridden. Prompted by the particular circumstances of the frontier society, most of what was written in Turkish was translated from Arabic and Persian. It was this culture of translation that led to the rise of Turkish from an oral vernacular to a literary language, which in turn was indispensable for Ottoman identity and empire building.
IFK: Pressemitteilung
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