Introduction
Wojciech Bobowski (c. 1610–1675), a Pole born in Lviv, became one of the most important figures in contemporary Turkish musicology as an invaluable source of information on seventeenth-century Ottoman music. Under what circumstances he ended up in the sultan’s service is not entirely clear. The sources suggest that he left his homeland in the early 1630s, a well-educated young man versed in music and foreign languages. The subject literature presents several versions of events: the prevalent one states that he was taken prisoner by Tatars during one of their regular raids on the eastern part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. On his way east, Bobowski must have shown his abilities because he was deemed sufficiently valuable to be sent into the service of the Ottoman sultan. He spent several years in the palace in Adrianople and eventually entered the inner service (Enderūn Footnote 1 ) in the sultan’s main seat in Constantinople, today known as the Topkapı Palace. He lived there until the early 1650s, serving as a court musician (and probably a physician) using the Turkish name Ali and a mahlas Ufkī. From this period, he left to posterity hundreds of musical pieces notated using the five-line stave notation. His musical manuscripts remain one of the most important sources for investigations into musical practice in seventeenth-century Istanbul and on the possibilities of the historically informed performance of Ottoman music (cf. Ali Ufkî Reference Ufkî and Elçin1976; Reference Ufkî and Uludemir1989; Reference Ufkî and Uludemir1991; Reference Ufkî and Cevher2003; Ayangil Reference Ayangil2008; Behar Reference Behar2008a; Reference Behar2008b; Reference Behar2019; Doğrusöz et al. Reference Doğrusöz, Gardner and Tunçer2020; Feldman Reference Feldman and Greve2015; Reference Faber and L’Homme2022; Reference Feldman2024; Greve Reference Greve2015; Haug Reference Haug2019; 2020a; 2020b; Karakaya Reference Karakaya2021; Pekin Reference Pekin2015; Tansuğ Reference Tansuğ1997; Wright Reference Wright1992).
After the çıkma (i.e. leaving palace service) other “personae” of Wojciech Bobowski emerged. He stayed in the Ottoman capital and started to work as a teacher of Turkish language and customs, translator and informant for various European and Ottoman parties. He became well known among diplomats, missionaries, travellers and intellectuals interested in the Orient under his Latin name, Albertus Bobovius (often in its Italianized version Alberto Bobovio), or under a simplified Turkish name: Ali Bey. Among his most important works of this period are: Turkish translations of the two influential treatises on Islam, Turkish grammars and dictionaries, and two narrative texts used by Paul Rycaut in The Present State of the Ottoman Empire (Rycaut Reference Rycaut1668): a description of the plot against Kösem Sultan (cf. Neudecker Reference Neudecker1997), and the so-called Serai Enderum (1665), a detailed account of the way of life and work at the Topkapı Palace.Footnote 2
In this paper, I focus on the latter. For my research I chose the Italian version of the work, kept in The British Library, Western Manuscripts Collection, under the signature MS Harley 3409. I read Serai Enderum not only as an important source of information about the seventeenth-century Ottoman court’s organization, administration, and customs (a perspective employed by previous scholars, see: Miller Reference Miller1931; Reference Miller1941; Kurt Reference Kurt, Bulunur, Bozkurt and İzgi2017) but also as a source of Ottoman Turkish linguistic data, and a record of Bobowski’s autobiographical memory. We assume that he wrote the Serai Enderum in 1665, that is more than 10 years after being released from the service at the palace. Hence, the text as a whole is written in retrospect, which is not always obvious due to the chaotic usage of Italian grammatical tenses in MS Harley 3409. Keeping that in mind, I will focus on the music-related memories and musical expertise of Ali Ufkī emerging (or not) from 13 passages excerpted from the manuscript.
In the following sections I will present the state-of-the-art on the Serai Enderum and its contemporary editions. After that, I will investigate what we can learn about Ottoman music from its practitioner and teacher, what new insights about Ali Ufkī’s role as a court musician we can find in the record of his memories, and the terminology and conceptual apparatus Bobovius used to explain Ottoman music to the potential European readers of his work. In this primarily philological and terminological study, I interpret Bobovius as a “multilingual speaker” and a “terminologist”, who on the pages of the Serai Enderum undertook the demanding task of providing Italian equivalents and definitions of Ottoman Turkish musical terms.
This feature of Bobowski’s transcultural intellectual output has been overlooked by scholars. In fact, even if he would not label his efforts as a “terminology work” (cf. Engel and Picht Reference Engel, Picht, Hoffmann, Kalverkämper, Wiegand, Galinski and Hüllen1999; Faber and L’Homme Reference Faber and L’Homme2022; Galinski and Budin Reference Galinski, Budin, Hoffmann, Kalverkämper, Wiegand, Galinski and Hüllen1999; Lukszyn and Zmarzer Reference Lukszyn and Zmarzer2006), employing a contemporary perspective allows us to discover that when Bobovius was explaining Ottoman Turkish words pertaining to any kind of specialized knowledge in his manuscript collections, authored works and translations (be it music, medicine, religion, administration or education), he was indeed “clarifying and organizing concepts and names, as well as systematizing concepts and the terms that lexicalize them” (Mazurkiewicz-Sułkowska Reference Mazurkiewicz-Sułkowska2014: 15). Sometimes he would use terminological explanations for himself, in the form of glosses and marginalia we can now observe in his manuscript collections. Other times, his choice of specific words would have to convey (often complex) meanings to the potential reader unfamiliar with the socio-cultural reality of the Ottoman Empire. Terminology provided by Bobowski in the Serai Enderum belongs to the latter group.
MS Harley 3409 is rich in Turkish vocabulary – a feature hitherto overlooked by researchers. I gathered 316 Ottoman Turkish glosses and 13 phrases written in the Latin alphabet influenced by the rules of Italian orthography. I interpret one- and two-word lexical items excerpted from the Serai Enderum as specialized terms of the following fields of expertise: Ottoman state administration, seraglio administration and customs, medicine and hygiene, warfare, sport and entertainment, religion, religious and secular celebrations, music, clothing, cuisine and diet, education. At the end of this article, in a tabular glossary, I try to encapsulate Bobovius’ terminological efforts relating to his specialized knowledge of music. Description of the musical terms is accompanied by a comparative analysis of their usage as recorded in two seventeenth-century Ottoman Turkish dictionaries: Franciscus a Mesgnen Meniński’s Thesaurus linguarum orientalium (Meniński Reference Meniński1680) and Giovanni Molino’s Dittionario della lingua italiana, turchesca (1641, ed. Siemieniec-Gołaś Reference Siemieniec-Gołaś2005).
In this paper, I am more interested in how Bobovius “speaks” about music, less in what he is saying about it. However, I engage with the musicological literature providing a commentary on selected matters regarding the theory and practice of music. A detailed discussion on the contribution of the part of the material presented here to our understanding of Ottoman music had already been provided by Judith I. Haug in her monograph on the “Compendium” MS Turc 292 (Haug Reference Haug2019). I will refer to her seminal work frequently. My aim is to provide the scholarly community with easy access to the music-related excerpts from the Serai Enderum and hopefully to inspire further musicological discussions. More importantly, I would like to present yet another dimension of Wojciech Bobowski’s intellectual personality and the multifaceted cognitive process that transpires from his work.
Saray-ı Enderūn – Serai Enderum
The title of Wojciech Bobowski’s description of the Topkapı Palace, Serai Enderum, is in fact an Italianized (and misspelled by a copyist) name of the (inaccessible to the outside world) “inner” part of the palace, called in Ottoman Turkish Saray-ı Enderūn (Enderūn of the Palace). According to our current knowledge, Bobovius completed this text in May 1665, that is, more than 10 years after leaving the palace service. The work since its creation has been of great interest to Orientalists. It is the only work by Bobovius published in print while the author was still alive, and it immediately received international recognition as an important source of information about Ottoman administration and culture.
Bobovius described in detail a specific space of the palace: Enderūn was a part located behind its third gate (the so-called, Bāb-üs-saʿāde, “Gate of Happiness”), by the third courtyard. It was adjacent to the Hās Oda (i.e. sultan’s private chambers) and the Harem (Miller Reference Miller1941: 50). The space housed male slaves, known as the içoğlan, of various ranks and occupations. A palace school, in subject literature referred to as Enderūn or Enderūn Mektebi, also functioned there. Bobovius depicted this space on a schema (MS Harley 3409, p. 9). A detailed description of its inhabitants, their occupation, daily routine, and the hierarchy to which they were subjected in their functions followed. He devoted several pages to the palace education system – its purpose was to make officials and military officers out of the new arrivals at the palace. Thus, Bobowski’s Serai Enderum is a description of the Enderūn in all three of its meanings: 1) a specific space of the Topkapı Palace of the seventeenth century; 2) the “inner service” – an element of the Ottoman state administration system; and 3) an important element of the Ottoman education system – the palace school (cf. Bayerle Reference Bayerle1997: 22, 61–2; İnalcık Reference İnalcık2020: 55; Miller Reference Miller1931; Reference Miller1941; Shaw Reference Shaw and Świetlik2012: 191–240).
My current research is based on the Italian manuscript of the Serai Enderum, which remains the oldest version of Bobovius’ text at our disposal. It is kept at the British Library, Western Manuscripts Collection, under the signature MS Harley 3409. It was discovered for modern Oriental studies by Barnette Miller in the 1930s. It became an important source for her research on the administrative structure of the Topkapı Palace (Miller Reference Miller1931), and on the Enderūn Mektebi (Miller Reference Miller1941). More recently, fragments of the MS Harley 3409 regarding music (pp. 47–54) have been used by J.I. Haug (Reference Haug2019; see more below). A full translation and critical edition of the MS Harley 3409 is available for Polish readers (Pawlina Reference Pawlina2023a).
The manuscript contains 66 pages sized 21 x 15 cm and 40 pages sized 20 x 14 cm, bound together with a wider (23 x 19 cm) binding. The first two pages are empty aside from the librarian’s annotation. The third page (see Figure 1) is numbered by the copyist’s hand as 1*, and it shows a lengthy title of the work:
Serai Enderum, cioè Penetrale Dell’Seraglio detto nuovo dei G[rand]. S[igno]ri e Re Ottomani; la descrittione del loro vivere e costumi et altri essercitij, da me Alberto Bobovio Sequolitano Polaccho, fatta al qu[e]l tempo di Sultan Ibrahim strangolato, et nel’tempo del presente G.S. Sultan Memetto, Figliolo del predetto Sultan Ibrahim, ha qui con ufficio di Paggi di musica parecchi anni habitato.
Figure 1. Serai Enderum, MS Harley 3409 (British Library, Western Manuscripts Coll.), p. 1*.
Serai Enderum, that is an Inner Part of the Seraglio known as The New Palace of the Ottoman Sultan; a description of the place, where they live, their clothing and other matters [written] by myself, Alberto Bobovio [=Wojciech Bobowski], a Polish secular man, who has been living there for several years under the reign of Sultan Ibrahim [I], who had been strangled, and [then] during the reign of his son, Sultan Mehmed [IV], serving as Page of Music.
There is no text on the back of the title page. The description of the palace begins on the page numbered 1 by the copyist, which is technically the fifth page of the manuscript. From this point on, the numbering is continuous, clearly visible on each page, and ends with the number 93. On the last page (see Figure 2), we can see the name of the author, along with a dedication, and a date and place of the work’s completion:
Datum in Pera di Gal[a]ta di Costan[tinopo]li/20 Maggio 1665/Del Ser[vito]re D[estis]simo Ser[vito]re De Virtudi: Alberto Bobovio.
Figure 2. Serai Enderum, MS Harley 3409 (British Library, Western Manuscripts Coll.), p. 93.
[Dated in Pera on [the hill of] Galata in Constantinopole/20 May 1665/By a Righteous Servant of all Servants of Virtues, Alberto Bobovio].
In the initial phase of this research, I assumed that MS Harley 3409 might be the first, original version of the Serai Enderum. Even though the handwriting does not belong to Bobovius, there was a chance that it was an original text dictated by him to a scribe. However, I ruled out this possibility due to some factual errors regarding Ottoman customs and the repeated misspelling of Turkish glosses. The distortions of the phonetic value of multiple words allow us to ascertain that the scribe of the MS Harley 3409 did not know Turkish. They further indicate that the scribe was rewriting the text from an earlier version written in blurred handwriting. He had problems with correctly rewriting glosses with the letters “m” (e.g. OT mızrak in MS Harley 3409 is written as sızrak), “n” (e.g. OT Enderūn > Enderum, OT nefer > hefer) and “ş” (e.g. OT başkapıoğlanı > baschkapaoglani and baschikapaoglani). I also observed shifts of syllables and letters that linguistically can only be explained as mistakes made during rewriting a word unknown to the scribe in its phonetic form.
Considering these, I support the claims of previous scholars in the field: the original version of Bobovius’ Serai Enderum, most likely written in Italian, had been lost and remains so (cf. Fisher and Fisher Reference Fisher and Garrett Fisher1985: 7; Haug Reference Haug2019: 48, 145; Miller Reference Miller1941: 48). However, the work has been copied by various hands, paraphrased, translated into German and French, and printed by subsequent authors. As a result, Serai Enderum has been preserved in several manuscript versions, as well as in old prints, which differ in their contents.
As well as the MS Harley 3409, there are two other manuscripts of the Serai Enderum written in Italian. They have been found by Pier Mattia Tommasino: one in the Biblioteca dell’Accademia dei Filopàtridi in Savignano sul Rubicone (dated 1669), the other (undated) in the Biblioteca Comunale Federiciana in Fano (Tommasino Reference Tommasino2011: 111; Reference Tommasino2015: 15, 20). A detailed comparison of the three manuscripts is a potential research area for experts in Italian linguistics, especially those interested in the language variations used in the Eastern Mediterranean of the Early Modern period.
Cornelio Magni included a paraphrase of Bobovius’ Serai Enderum in one of his elaborated “letters from travels in the Levant” printed in Parma between 1679 and 1692, entitled: Quanto di più curioso, e vago ha potuto raccorre Cornelio Magni nel primo biennio da esso consumato in viaggi, e dimore per la Turchia … (Magni Reference Magni1679: 500–604).Footnote 3 He reworked the text and produced a distinctive compilation, which is “shorter and linguistically cleaner” (Tommasino Reference Tommasino2011: 111) when compared with MS Harley 3409. He included it in Lettera Sesta [The Sixth Letter] dated “Galata di Constantinopoli, 14 Ottobre 1672” (Magni Reference Magni1679: 604). The beginning of the Serai Enderum is indicated by a headline (Magni Reference Magni1679: 502). Its ending bears a different date from the letter itself, and shows the name of its author: “Dato nelle Vigne di Pera li 20. Marzo 1670. Alberto Bobouio” (Magni Reference Magni1679: 602).
Magni may have received a copy of the text from Bobovius himself when they met in Istanbul in 1671 (cf. Haug Reference Haug2019: 48). Then he would use it to create his own version that differs stylistically and partly factually from the contents of the MS Harley 3409. A detailed comparison of all Italian versions of the Serai Enderum has not yet been undertaken, making it impossible to determine whether Magni used any of the manuscripts mentioned here, or perhaps a lost original or another copy unknown to us, made by Bobovius in 1670.Footnote 4
A German translation of the Serai Enderum by Nicolaus Brenner was published in Vienna in 1667 with the title: Serai Enderum. Das ist: Inwendige Beschaffenheit der Türckischen Kayserl… (Bobovio and Brenner Reference Bobovio and Brenner1667).Footnote 5 In 2013, Türkis Noyan prepared the first Turkish translation of this version of the text (Ali Ufkî Bey Reference Ufkî Bey and Bobovius2013). In 2017, another edition of the Viennese old print along with a facsimile and a new Turkish translation by Memo G. Schachiner was published (Bobowski Reference Bobowski, Ufkī and Schachiner2017).
A French version of the Serai Enderum has attracted the strongest scholarly attention so far. Its manuscript is kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France under the signature NAF (Nouvelle Acquisition Français) 4997.Footnote 6 The translation was made in 1686 by Pierre de Girardin, ambassador of King Louis XIV in Constantinople in the years 1686–88. During his first stay in the Ottoman capital, in 1665, he learnt Turkish from Bobowski (Fisher and Fisher Reference Fisher and Garrett Fisher1985: 7; Haug Reference Haug2019: 62). The first English translation of this heavily amended paraphrase of Bobovius’ Serai Enderum was by Alan Fisher and Carol Fisher (Reference Fisher and Garrett Fisher1985). In 1990, its excerpts concerning music were published in English in the form of a short article (Martin Reference Martin1990), which was then used as a reference by Walter Feldman in his ground-breaking monograph on Ottoman court music (Feldman Reference Feldman2024, first published in 1996). A few years later, Annie Berthier and Stéphane Yerasimos prepared a full critical edition of Girardin’s manuscript enriching the text with commentary (Bobovius Reference Bobovius, Berthier and Yerasimos1999). This publication, in turn, was translated into Turkish by Ali Berktay and published in 2002 (Bobovius Reference Bobovius, Berthier, Yerasimos and Berktay2002).
The content of the widely available French version of the Serai Enderum differs significantly from both Italian and German versions of the text. While reading it, we clearly feel the presence of two narrators: Bobovius and Pierre de Girardin. The latter has altered, often expanded, the information given originally by Bobowski. He also included his own comments on the cultural and political phenomena described in the work and, importantly, presented Turkish glosses in both the Latin transcription (different from the one observed in MS Harley 3409) and in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. This feature of Girardin’s manuscript awaits linguists’ attention.
During my research focused on the contents of the MS Harley 3409, I made several observations regarding its convergence with other versions of the Serai Enderum. I discovered that Brenner’s translation is the most similar to the Italian manuscript in terms of the factual content, terminology, and layout of the text. Even though both versions display significant differences (e.g. different schemes of the Enderūn,Footnote 7 numbers referring to rooms and courts shown on them, different order and length of several paragraphs) it would be much more difficult to decipher and interpret some vague passages of the MS Harley 3409 without consulting the German text. Brenner’s work is better structured, translator’s annotations are clearly indicated by parentheses. In comparison, MS Harley 3409 seems to be a copy rewritten from another (rather confusing) source without much consideration for the inner structuring and logical, clear flow of the final text. We may ascertain that the German translator worked with another Italian manuscript, or, if he worked with the MS Harley 3409, he has corrected the text based on his own knowledge of Turkish customs or on other sources at his disposal.
An even more exciting discovery pertains to the possible usage of the Serai Enderum by Paul Rycaut during his work on The Present State of the Ottoman Empire (Rycaut Reference Rycaut1668). The latter was published for the first time in London in 1666, and was printed anew many times and translated into several languages. It was one of the most influential works on the early modern Ottoman Empire and remains an important source for Ottoman studies. Rycaut refers to Bobowski as his main informant twice (Rycaut Reference Rycaut1668: The Epistle to the Reader and p. 133) but makes no mention of any written source (cf. Haug Reference Haug2019: 61, 81; Pawlina Reference Pawlina2023a: 43; Reference Pawlina2024: 28). Yet the resemblance of several passages in the first book of The Present State … to the factual contents and paragraph structure of the MS Harley 3409 allows us to conclude that the detailed description of the inner workings at the Topkapı Palace might have been commissioned from Bobovius by Rycaut himself. The English Orientalist may have used the MS Harley 3409 or the lost original of the work. This lead is worthy of further investigation.
Music-related excerpts from the MS Harley 3409
In the Serai Enderum Bobovius did not devote as much attention to the musical life of the Ottoman court as one might expect from an ex-court musician and music teacher. However, the terminology he uses to describe it, as well as his selection of facts pertaining to musical education and performance included in the text make this source particularly interesting for musicology. I have found 13 passages related to music and musicianship. I present all of them below, in the order in which they appear in the MS Harley 3409 (except for the autobiographic passage no. 13). I provide my own English translation and interpretation in terms of the interpunction and division into paragraphs (both inconsistent in the manuscript). Each passage is accompanied by a short musicological and/or philological commentary. Detailed terminological investigation of the Italian and Ottoman Turkish lexical items excerpted from the text, which led to the interpretations presented here, are given in the next section of the article.
1) MS Harley 3409, p. 2
If the palace needs the services of craftsmen or artists, the kapı ağası lets them in at designated times. Among them are for example: the sultan’s teacher […], physicians, both Jewish and Turkish; surgeons; [chamber music’s] instrument teachers and [teachers of the mehterhāne] orchestra; blacksmiths; masons; jewellers and watchmakers.
From this passage, we learn that at the palace music was taught not only by musicians residing in the Enderūn but also by “musical instrument teachers and [teachers of the] orchestra [maestri di strumenti e di Musicha]” invited from the outside, i.e. from Istanbul. Bobovius does not give us any further details on whom these maestri were or from where exactly they would come to the palace. Sources contemporary to Ali Ufkī and our current understanding of the history of Ottoman music points to the members of the Mevlevī order (cf. Behar Reference Behar and Faroqhi2006; Reference Behar2019: 35, 59–60; Feldman Reference Feldman2022: 143–50; Reference Feldman2024: 87–93; Güneygül Reference Güneygül2021: 109–17; Haug Reference Haug2019: 208, 325; Kahraman and Dağlı Reference Kahraman and Dağlı2008; Pekin Reference Pekin2015: 42–7).
2) MS Harley 3409, p. 20
In the section on a daily routine of the acemi oğlans, Bobovius mentions müezzin’s call to prayer (i.e. ezan):
After all this is finished and they have returned to their places, each one of them takes a book called the Al-Quran, and reads it aloud until the müezzin, that is, “the convener”, cries out for them so they would come to the mosque.
Here, we could take note of Bobovius’ choice of the verb lexicalizing the “voicing of the ezan”: il Muesin, che vol dir convocatore, grida, che venghino alla moschea. Choosing the verb gridare “to shout, to cry, to call up on somebody” for Tur. ezan okumak “to recite the ezan” (lit. “to read the ezan”) might have been a conscious decision of the author to use European conceptual apparatus (“to shout, to call [for prayer]”), instead of the Turkish one. It can also be, simply, a calque of the Turkish verb çağırmak “to shout, to call upon (somebody)”, sometimes used in this context (ezan can be explained as Tur. çağrısı “a call”).
3) MS Harley 3409, p. 37
In this passage, Bobovius describes preparations for the Kurban Bayram celebrations. As a part of these, the strongest of pages are carrying carpets from the vault to one of the palace gates. The next day, the sultan will have received ceremonial greetings from his subjects by this gate, therefore it must be decorated. The task becomes a contest for the strongmen, and an occasion to enjoy entertainment and music by içoğlans:
When the strongmen are carrying carpets, the pages are given permission to come out of their chambers to watch their struggle and cheer them on. Open-air music on drums, pipes and trumpets resounds, and the pages are shouting Allah, Allah kuvvet vere!, that is, “God, God, give [them] strength!”
In this passage, terminologically the most interesting is a compound term: la m[u]sica campestra.Footnote 8 The latter word is a Spanish borrowing meaning [here] “open-air, field”.Footnote 9 The term “open-air music”Footnote 10 connotes music of the mehterhāne, or – in a broader sense – the kabasāz, kaba mūsikī, that is, music designed to be played “outdoors”, as opposed to the incesāz, ince mūsikī, that is, chamber music designed to be played “indoors” (cf. Behar Reference Behar and Faroqhi2006: 402–3; Feldman Reference Feldman2024: xx f., 173, passim).
4) MS Harley 3409, p. 47
From this passage, we learn that court musicians may have become favourites of the sultan, and perhaps even lovers, as it is a fragment of a longer paragraph on homosexual relationships observed by Bobovius at the palace:
The current ruler, named Sultan Mehmed [sic], fell in love with a certain young man from Constantinople, who was his music page, named Kuloğlu. He is now not only one of his musicians, but he plays and sings when[ever] His Majesty commands it, [being] also his favourite.
Judith I. Haug has already established that “Sultan Mehmed [IV]” in this passage, is erroneous for “Sultan Murad [IV]” (Haug Reference Haug2019: 210). Perhaps that is the scribe’s mistake. Since it appears that the scribe did not know Turkish, it is likely that he simply confused the two names, which are frequently mentioned in the text. This mix-up would not be surprising given his lack of knowledge of the language. The mistake is repeated in Girardin’s version of the Serai Enderum (MS NAF 4997: 159), while in Brenner’s German translation, Kuloğlu is properly named a favourite of Sultan Murad IV (Bobovio and Brenner Reference Bobovio and Brenner1667: 72).
“Kuloğlu”, the second historical figure evoked in this passage, is one of the quite well-documented musicians from the early seventeenth century, an aşık and çöğür player, contemporary and acquainted with Evliya Çelebi (Güneygül Reference Güneygül2021: 79; Haug Reference Haug2019: 208–9, 352–3; Kahraman and Dağlı Reference Kahraman and Dağlı2008: 640, 642).
5) MS Harley 3409, p. 48
In this passage, we are given vague general information on Ottoman music and the position of musicians in the palace’s inner service hierarchy:
Another [official of a higher rank serving at the palace] is sāzendebaşı, meaning “head or a master of music”. [Music performed] among the Turks is ancient and monophonic. When His Majesty wants [to listen to] music, he [sāzendebaşı] is responsible for it, and accompanies [the musicians on the way to the Hās Oda], and remains with them until they have finished playing. However, he himself never joins in the performance. He waits, according to the custom and rank, to be promoted to a higher position in the Hās Oda. In my time, this rank was held by a Genoese renegade.
To describe Turkish music, Bobovius used the words: [é] antica, [é] unica, which can be interpreted as “[it is] ancient” and “[it is] unique”. The German version of this passage is clearer in its terminology: “Ein anderer heißt Sazende Baʃci nemblich Maister über die Music, welliche [sic] bei denen Türcken alt, aber nur einstimmig ist” (Bobovio and Brenner Reference Bobovio and Brenner1667: 73). Hence, I decided to interpret the word unica here as “single-voiced, monophonic”, just as the interpreter contemporary to Bobovius had done.Footnote 11
Moreover, Bobovius provides a curious description of the activities of the sāzendebaşı, noting that he accompanies the orchestra to the Sultan’s private chambers but “he is not singing anymore [Ital. non canta più]”. This wording is unexpected, as we would anticipate the author to use the phrase non sona più (“he is not playing anymore”) for the head of the instrumentalists. The verb cantare (“to sing”), used in the passage, would be more appropriate for describing the duties of a hānendebaşı. Another question that arises from this fragment: was sāzendebaşı’s role limited to organizing and preparing musical performances without actively participating in them “anymore”?
Last but not least, I was not able to identify the Genoese sāzendebaşı mentioned in the text. Is it the same person, who “was brought [to the sultan] by the Barbary corsairs” (see passage no. 6)? It is a lead worth further investigation not only from the musicological perspective. Tracing the history of this “Genoese renegade” could help us better understand the timeline of Bobovius’ stay at the Topkapı Palace.
6) MS Harley 3409, pp. 49–54
This is the longest passage on music and other performing arts in the Serai Enderum, interrupted briefly on pages 50–51 by autobiographical information which I have decided to present separately in the next section of the article. The passage is dense with details on the education (meşk) and performance practices of both chamber musicians and members of the mehterhāne. Notions worth emphasizing concern: the close relationship between Ottoman poetry and music, especially between usuls and the prosody of the poems used in compositions; the monophonic nature of Ottoman music; the instruments used in “courtly” and “folkloric” repertoire performed at the palace; and a historical instance of a certain Italian sāzendebaşı, who composed European-style music for the sultan, but did not gain any recognition for the deed.
The majority of this passage has been already transcribed, translated, and analysed in terms of its musicological value by J.I. Haug (Reference Haug2019: 46, 143, 198, 226, 271, 273, 327, 359, 372, 376, 416–7). The general conclusion from her analysis, which should be kept in mind, is that information on genre, division between “court” and “folk” musics, and some details of the performance practice given by Bobovius are contradictory to the repertoire and marginalia excerpted from his musical manuscripts. Since there is already an in-depth analysis of the data, instead of a further commentary below the quote, I use footnotes to: a) point out differences between MS Harley 3409 and other versions of the Serai Enderum;Footnote 12 b) point out the factual contradictions with Ali Ufkī’s repertoire, as established by J.I. Haug; c) point out the differences in my reading of the MS Harley 3409 compared to existing scholarly interpretations; and d) provide a short commentary on terminological issues, which are further elaborated in the next section of the article.
Meşkhāne, that is a music practice room, is open throughout the day into the evening, and no one lives inside. It is a place where performers of outdoor music come to practise. Teachers of chamber music [p. 50] come from the outside [from the city] every day after [the meeting of] Divan is finished, that is at nine o’clock, and they come to the meşkhāne. Then, the pages [who take music lessons] come here from their chambers, and stay with their masters to practise together for an hour. Their music [Turkish music] is monophonic. They have some knowledge about our [music].Footnote 13
Sultan Murad had a splendid maestro di musica [sāzdendebaşı], who was an Italian, brought [to the padishah] by the Barbary corsairs. He composed a concert song and an instrumental piece, but such [European-style] music was foreign to their ears. Moreover, Sultan Murad had deemed [these pieces] bad and effeminate, so he did not want to listen to them more than once.
They also have knowledge of tones [here: scales, tunes]Footnote 14 and they use them to compose music for their poems [retrieving the tunes] from their memory. They always beat out the rhythm on drums,Footnote 15 and the various types of their songs: murabba, kār, nakış, semāʿī, are differentiated [from one another] by themFootnote 16 and [they] have 24 types of tempo in their music, which are changing according to the length of a given line [of a poem’s stanza]. In the religious songs, called by them tesbīh, ilāhī [and] tevhīd, they do not show the tempoFootnote 17 with raising and lowering the hand above the knees.Footnote 18
(…) [autobiographical passage, see passage no. 13]
[p. 51] Other simple Turkish poems [here: songs] are called türkī, which are sung in certain [sets of] tones known by them by heart.Footnote 19 The themes [of türkīs] are their wars, victories, love, suffering and estrangement from their homeland. Fools [i.e. the uneducated] delight in these, just as the learned and more civilized [find entertainment] in the aforementioned murabbas, which are usually [sung] in Persian.Footnote 20
Their instruments are:Footnote 21 kemānçe, that is, a violin; [lutes] tanbūr and şeştar;Footnote 22 cithara [çeng?] and decachordum [kanun];Footnote 23 santur, that is, a psaltery [erroneous for dulcimer].Footnote 24 All [of them] are different from our instruments. [There are also] mıskal [that is] bagpipe [erroneous for panpipe],Footnote 25 flute [called] nāy, [trumpet] nefīr, a Persian shawm,Footnote 26 and a lute [called] ūd. Footnote 27 And on these, they accompany the aforementioned delicate songs [i.e. incesāz].Footnote 28 To accompany the türkīs, they have other instruments, such as [p. 52] çöğür, colascione [bağlama/tambura],Footnote 29 drums, [and lutes] tel tamburası and çeşte.Footnote 30
They have also their [poets called] şāʿir, that is Turkish poets, who sing improvised rhythmical [poems].
The pages who are [trained as] dancers are called rakkās, and [those trained as] comedians are called mukallid. They practise in the aforementioned chamber [meşkhāne] from early afternoon until evening, accompanied by musicians [who play for them on] drums, rattles and castanets, which the Turks call [respectively] dāʾire, çağana and çalpara.Footnote 31
In the afternoon, the outdoor music teachers come in and [the musicians] practise [with them]. Their instruments are: the shawm, called in Turkish zurna, and trumpets [called] boru. They play [them] to the beat on drum[s] [called] davul, small nakkāre, kudüm, dümbelek, and cymbals [called] zil.Footnote 32 They also train [musicians] to play the large drums made of bronze [kös], which are placed on the back of a camel; [during war expeditions these camels] walk in front of the sultan.
These [military] musicians, who live outside [the Enderūn] are obliged [to come to the palace] every morning to play [the sultan] a good day and good night wishes – an hour before sunrise and an hour-and-a-half after sunset.Footnote 33 [Their music] also announces the bayram[s], and [is played] when the padishah solemnly walks [through the city]. Some mehterhāne [orchestra players] can stay in the houses of the highest dignitaries, who had been awarded ceremonially with a kaftan [p. 53]. They receive their gratuity from them.
There are also [musicians] who reside in [the palace], but who are not içoğlans.Footnote 34 They perform during the two bayrams, when [strongmen] are carrying the carpets [see passage no. 3] or when someone is given the title of beylerbey or paşa, and leaves the seraglio [see passage no. 7]. Moreover, when the padishah takes a boat ride, he is always accompanied by [musicians playing] two shawms and a [kettledrum] nakkāre. They play while the bostancı, that is, “gardeners”, are rowing.
Every Tuesday, chamber musicians sing and play for the sultan when [the barber] trims his hair and beard. Moreover, when it pleases the padishah, musicians enter the ladies’ chamber [Harem]. But [there they] play and sing blindfolded, with their heads bowed, not to see the women gathered there. Additionally, the eunuchs stand over them to make sure that no one raises his head. If someone does that, [eunuch] immediately slaps him on the neck [i.e. executes hapas].
During the circumcision ceremony of Sultan Mehmed, the musicians stayed in the Hās Oda for twelve days, and they had to play and sing there with very little sleep. In addition, various domestic comedies, simple [performances] were performed. Since then [Sultan Mehmed] has not been particularly fond [p. 54] of music. […] Sultan Murad liked music very much, because he liked to spend time with men, contrary to Sultan Ibrahim, who liked to converse with women.
7) MS Harley 3409, pp. 62–3
In this passage, Bobovius describes one of the occasions when pages living in the Enderūn were allowed for some entertainment with music:
According to custom, when a [newly promoted] beylerbey departs from the seraglio […] he orders two pots to be filled with silver and gold; two eunuchs carry these pots to a place resembling an arcaded stage located in front of the entrance to the audience chambers […] [p. 63]. Then the outdoor musicians enter, beating drums, playing trumpets and pipes. Watching the pages trying to catch the silver and gold flying in all directions, and snatching the pots thrown at them from each other’s hands is very entertaining.
8) MS Harley 3409, pp. 65–6
In this passage, we are given some more details on the location of musicians during the circumcision ceremony of young Sultan Mehmed IV:
[It is] a loggia in front of the entrance to the Hās Oda. [There is] a window, behind which the Sultan sits when he [listens to] music, [receives] the grand vizier [p. 66] or mufti. This is where the entertainment went on during the circumcision of the now-reigning Sultan.
9) MS Harley 3409, pp. 67–8
In a longer passage regarding a ceremonial choosing of a new haseki, a sultan’s concubine, Bobovius evokes music-making by women. At the end of the Serai Enderum, the author informs us that he has received the information on the customs of the imperial Harem from a woman who lived there (MS Harley 3409: 93). He was not an eyewitness to these events.
The chosen one picks it up [the handkerchief thrown at her by the sultan] and places a kiss on it, bowing to the sultan. When the padishah returns to his chamber, the other women congratulate the new favourite, and falls to her feet […]. [Then] accompanied by music and songs played and sung by the women, she is escorted to the door marked H [on the Enderūn’s scheme]. Here, she is awaited by a eunuch who enjoys the sultan’s greatest favour; he informs him of the odalisque’s arrival and, upon his permission, ushers her inside. […] Meanwhile, [p. 68] the other women continue to sing [at the door] until the above-mentioned woman [the new haseki] is dismissed.
10) MS Harley 3409, p. 72
In the longer section on imperial weddings, Bobovius gives special attention to music-making by men and women during the sultana’s wedding ceremony. We learn that after the bride and groom have eaten a meal together in sultana’s chamber, all the servants go out and leave them alone for an hour. After an hour:
The groom’s friends gather musicians and they [start to] make noise with drums and other instruments; [while the music is playing, they] bring the groom out to the men’s quarters. Once the groom is out, the women come to the sultana’s chamber and then, until dawn, [they] enjoy themselves with games, songs and music.
11) MS Harley 3409, p. 75
Here, Bobovius once again mentions the barred window in the loggia from where the sultan would listen to music:
From here the sultan also listened to music, and when he was circumcised, here [behind this window] he would lie covered with sable furs for fifteen days; [he was there] together with his mother [Hatice Turhan] and the old queen [Kösem].Footnote 35
12) MS Harley 3409, p. 84
From the paragraph entitled “The pastime of the pages”, we can learn that music-making was not a common entertainment, allowed only several times a year:
During the three days of the two Bayrams, i.e. their Easter [sic], and when the war victories are being celebrated, the pages are allowed by the Grand Signore to freely enjoy talking, singing, playing instruments [and] jesting.
Bobovius recalls Ali Ufkī’s life
The thirteenth passage on music from the Serai Enderum deserves special attention. It considers musicianship, but – more importantly – it is a rare example of biographical information written by Bobovius himself. It may be short, but it is dense with information (see Figure 3). It has been transcribed, translated and analysed from a musicological perspective by J.I. Haug (Reference Haug2019: 144–5). My analysis therefore focuses on autobiographical and linguistic data.
Figure 3. Serai Enderum, MS Harley 3409 (British Library, Western Manuscripts Coll.), p. 51.
13) MS Harley 3409, pp. 50–1
For them [palace musicians], writing down and reading music is an extraordinary ability; and they were astonished to see me taking my lessons from the masters and writing them down [with notes], and after many months to [see me] playing [the pieces we had learnt] the same way from my book, [p. 51] while the masters would have forgotten [these pieces]. The Turkish teachers began to show me respect when they saw this rare skill of mine, they recognized me and eventually appointed me a kārbaşı Footnote 36 [sic], that is, a choirmaster [sic].Footnote 37 Then, the other pages would come to me when they had forgotten a song, and ask me to open my book and to sing or play it to refresh their memory. I did so, and they were grateful to me. Some even begged me to teach them this rare skill, but having no other desire but [to regain my] freedom, I would [refuse to teach them and] apologise, saying that it took a very long time to learn.
This is the only instance of Bobovius speaking directly about his role as a court musician. We learn that writing down music was an important skill that helped him gain respect in the Enderūn, eventually leading to his promotion to a higher rank. He also mentions his music “book” twice. We can only speculate on whether he evokes Mecmūʿa-yı Sāz ü Söz or the Compendium Turc 292 (cf. Haug Reference Haug2019: 415). The narrative style reveals the charismatic personality of someone who was familiar with the inner workings of the palace and consciously used his skills to his advantage in a highly competitive environment. However, it is important to remember that Bobowski wrote this text long after he had left palace service. We can assume that he reinvented his persona to appeal to potential European readers (and employers), emphasizing his knowledge to demonstrate that he was a reliable source of information.
From a terminological (and autobiographical) point of view, the biggest revelation is the wording he uses to describe his rank: “kārbaşı, that is maestro di coro [choirmaster]”. If not for Bobowski’s definition, I would be inclined to interpret the term kārbaşı as deriving from the older, Persian meaning of kār “work, profession; [piece of] work, opus; pursuit; deed” (cf. Stachowski Reference Stachowski1998: 150). “Master of [various] pursuits” would be a fitting title for a person who served as a musician, music teacher and physician. Other interpretations derive from the Ottoman Turkish meanings of kār “work; effect [of work], impact; [piece of] work (here: musical piece?); mus. a vocal-instrumental genre of court music”. Being a “master of musical pieces” would also be a proper description of Ali Ufkī, who had written down so many musical works; it would not necessarily mean that he composed them, but that he was able to notate them and become a unique maestro of this “rare ability”. The absence of the term kārbaşı from other sources of the period could be explained by the uniqueness of his output noticed by his peers.Footnote 38
However, Bobowski juxtaposed the term with a definition maestro di coro, explicitly pointing to vocal music. Even if he did not mean “a choir” per se, but a “group of singers” (who were not necessarily singing together at the same time, as a European reader would think), it seems it was important to him to distinguish terminologically his own rank, from both maestro di strumenti “teacher of music” and maestro di musica, i.e. sāzendebaşı. Footnote 39 Does this mean that while serving as a court musician Ali Ufkī was recognized primarily as a singer, not as an instrumentalist, as we tend to believe today?Footnote 40
The interpretation of Ali Ufkī as a singer is reinforced by the abundance of vocal pieces in his repertoire (Ali Ufkî Reference Ufkî and Elçin1976; Behar Reference Behar1990; Haug Reference Haug2020) and the notes on voice production found in his “Compendium” (Haug Reference Haug2019: 423–6). Additionally, J.I. Haug’s assessment that he played the lute (çöğür, cf. n. 30) further bolsters this interpretation. If we consider the possibility that Wojciech Bobowski, in his youth, received musical education from an Italian maestro (Haug Reference Haug2016; Pawlina Reference Pawlina2023a; Reference Pawlina2024), it is reasonable to speculate that he was taught to sing and accompany himself on the lute – skills that align with the highly favoured performance practices of Italian Renaissance and Early Baroque music. Alas, we must add this intriguing terminological choice to the many other mysteries of Bobovius’ biography. This is not the first time that a new piece of information about him raises more questions than it answers.
Glossary: Ottoman Turkish and Italian musical terms in MS Harley 3409
Passages of the Serai Enderum relating to music may not be numerous, but, as seen above, they are dense with terminology and can be difficult for an uninformed reader follow. The conscious terminology work of Bobovius transpires in his consistent usage of expressions introducing an Italian definition [Y] after or (less frequently) before the Ottoman Turkish term [X]. The most frequent examples are: [X], [che] vol dir [Y] “[X], which means [Y]”; [X], cioé [Y] “[X], that is/namely [Y]”; [X], o [Y] “[X], or/that is [Y]”; [Y] si chiamano [X] “[Y], that is called [X]”; [Y] nominate [X] “[Y] called [X]”; [Y] in turchesco [X] “[Y] in Turkish [X]”. Usually, a Turkish gloss is written with a capital letter. More importantly, Bobovius consistently uses Italian descriptive terms invented by himself in various forms (in singular, plural, as a part of compounds), for instance: musica di campagna “outdoor music”, musici di campagna “performers of the outdoor music”; maestro di Musica “teacher of [the mehterhāne] orchestra”, maestri do Musica “teachers of [the mehterhāne] orchestra”.
In Table 1 I present the full conceptual apparatus pertaining to music employed by Bobovius in the Serai Enderum. In alphabetical order I present 36 Ottoman Turkish terms and 44 terminologically interpreted Italian expressions (including nouns, adjectives, and verbs) excerpted from the MS Harley 3409. I put linguistic and musicological data in the following order: 1) Ottoman Turkish term spelled according to the ninth edition of Osmanlı Türkçesi Sözlüğü (Parlatır Reference Parlatır2017); 2) the original spelling of the MS Harley 3409 and a page number in () brackets; 3) Bobovius’ original definition of a given term or an Italian musical term in original spelling with a page number; 4) English equivalent or a short definition of a given term.
Table 1. Glossary of musical terms used in the Serai Enderum (MS Harley 3409)
A description of the musical terms is accompanied by footnotes providing a comparative analysis of their usage as recorded in two seventeenth-century Ottoman Turkish dictionaries: Franciscus à Mesgnen Meniński’s Thesaurus linguarum orientalium (Meniński Reference Meniński1680) and Giovanni Molino’s Dittionario della lingua Italiana, Turchesca, written in 1641 (Siemieniec-Gołaś Reference Siemieniec-Gołaś2005: 96). The former is of particular value for the current research. Meniński was not only the greatest authority on Ottoman Turkish lexicology of the period, but also Wojciech Bobowski’s pupil. He enlisted Bobovius’ translation of Janua linguarum reserata as one of his sources for Ottoman Turkish vocabulary (abbreviated as Bob.). We can assume that Serai Enderum or orally transmitted information regarding music was at his disposal as well. In fact, definitions of musical terms included in the Thesaurus appear to be influenced by Ali Ufkī’s expertise in this field.Footnote 41
Conclusion
The main objective of this article was to provide the scholarly community with access to music-related fragments of the MS Harley 3409, a non-digitized Italian manuscript of the Serai Enderum created by Wojciech Bobowski (Bobovius, Bobovio, Ali Ufkī) in 1665, held in The British Library. By providing a descriptive glossary of musical terms used by Bobovius, I wanted to focus on a hitherto overlooked feature of his work: its richness in Ottoman Turkish specialized vocabulary.
The 36 Ottoman Turkish terms (with their Italian definitions or equivalents) and 44 Italian expressions excerpted from the MS Harley 3409 form a corpus that helps us understand Bobovius’ efforts to create a terminological framework for Ottoman music intended for European readers. Bobovius explains Ottoman Turkish music by briefly comparing it to European music, which he refers to as “our [music]”. Notably, he never judges one musical tradition as superior or inferior to the other, nor does he claim any cultural superiority of “Western music”, unlike some later authors.
Vocabulary presented in the glossary above shows that Bobovius was a skilful terminologist. In addition to several names of instruments, he succeeded in creating correct, short definitions of Ottoman Turkish terms (e.g. türkī, şair, meşkhāne, sāzendebaşı), providing their Italian equivalents (e.g. çalpara, davul, rakkas), coining new Italian terms (e.g. musici di campagna, cansonette delicate, paggio di musica) and using them consistently throughout the text.
An in-depth analysis of the musicological value of the material presented is beyond the scope of this paper, but its interdisciplinary nature compels me to draw some general conclusions. Music-related passages of the Serai Enderum provide us with details on musical practices at the Topkapı Palace, both in the selamlık and in the harem. We learn that music was played not only during religious and state celebrations, for the sultan’s leisure, and at imperial wedding ceremonies, but also simply for the entertainment of the inhabitants of Enderūn, providing a break from their heavy duties and strict discipline. Bobowski enlisted 21 names of Turkish instruments, seven names of musical genres, names of performing forces and musical professions. He even mentioned certain musicians residing in the seraglio in his times (Kuloğlu and the unknown Genoese sāzendebaşı). Additionally, he invoked two particular historical events: musical performance during the circumcision ceremony of Sultan Mehmed IV (which took place in October 1649), and a short (unsuccessful) concert of European-style music performed in the presence of Sultan Murad IV. It appears that Bobowski intentionally selected terms and information that would be relevant to a potential European reader who was not a music specialist. He omitted highly specialized music theory terms, such as makam and usul, even though we know he used these terms in his other manuscripts and possibly taught them to his pupils.
Terminologically, Bobowski distinguishes two main types of music: “indoor music” and “outdoor music”, with a clear distinction between two groups of performers: “chamber musicians” (musici di camera) and “outdoor musicians” (musici di campagna). They played different instruments, learned music separately with different teachers, at different times, and their duties varied. Moreover, from the narrative we can infer division between folkloric and courtly music, as well as a separate category of religious repertoire. There is also a mention of “women’s music”, but there is not enough data to consider musica donnesca and musica delle Dame as terminological items lexicalizing a separate genre.
The verbs used to describe musical activities are in line with what one might expect. Musicians usually “play” (s[u]onare) and “sing” (cantare), occasionally they “make noise” (strepitare) and “practice” (esercitare). The Italian comporre “to compose” is used in the context of both European and Ottoman music. Perhaps, the verb inculcate “to instil” used to describe “learning by heart via meşk system” has been chosen to emphasize the difficulties of the process. It is also notable that the verbs cantare and s[u]onare are used together in all but one instances. This suggests that, on most occasions, vocal and instrumental music were performed together, while performances featuring only instrumental or only vocal repertoire were rare.
The most striking issue observed in the material presented is the contradiction between the content of the Serai Enderum and Ali Ufkī’s repertoire. Factual errors and discrepancies can be observed in definitions of several Turkish instruments and genres, as well as in the omissions (e.g. in the list of musical genres, instrumental genres are missing, while many examples can be found in Bobowski’s musical manuscripts). It is highly speculative, but possible, that the knowledge of music presented in the Serai Enderum came from orally transmitted information from Bobovius, as well as some written sources he provided to the scribe who assisted in compiling the manuscript. One can reasonably infer that during a particularly busy period of his “professional life” (around 1665) he hired a scribe to assist him in order to fulfil a commissioned work for an employer (possibly Paul Rycaut). It seems that in the material provided to the scribe, Bobovius may have included his earlier loose notes, as well as the same written sources that Evliya Çelebi used in his Seyahatnāme (cf. Pekin Reference Pekin, Karateke and Aynur2012), perhaps translated by Bobowski into Italian for his own learning purposes at the beginning of his Ottoman education. That could explain both the factual errors, and the similarity of several passages presented above to the contents of Seyahatnāme. If this were the case, MS Harley 3409 could be the first, original, version of the Serai Enderum after all, even though it was not written in Bobowski’s own hand.
The exact origins of the creation of the Serai Enderum, as well as details about the musical activities of Bobowski and other members of the sultan’s court mentioned in his text, may remain elusive to us. However, it is evident that analysing how an author (in this case, Bobovius) articulates a particular phenomenon (here: Ottoman music) through the examination of the idiolect transpiring from the pages of any given written work (here: Serai Enderum), can offer valuable insights into both the linguistic and non-linguistic aspects of the text. This article highlights the potential benefits of incorporating linguistic and, more specifically, terminological research into music history studies. I contend that this approach can significantly deepen our understanding of both the history and historiography of Turkish music. It is my hope that in this article I was able to demostrate how a meticulous examination of Ottoman Turkish lexicography and lexicology can serve as a valuable supplementary resource for musicology. Given the limited availability of musical notations and other sources relevant for studying historical performance practices, I believe that even the smallest piece of information – such as a single musical term used in a specific narrative context – can spark a discussion and contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the Ottoman music.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the British Library (Western Manuscript Collection) for preparing a digital version of the MS Harley 3409 for the purposes of my research and for permission to use and reproduce the manuscript. I would like to thank Sandra Strugała for the help with deciphering and transcribing MS Harley 3409. I also wish to acknowledge suggestions of the BSOAS reviewers, which greatly strengthened the final version of this article.
Funding statement
This article was written within the framework of research project no. 2018/29/N/HS2/01686 funded by the National Science Centre Poland. To explore all its findings, see Pawlina Reference Pawlina2023a; 2023b; 2024.
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