Chronograph Master Kandî and His Chronogram Poetics

Abstract

Chronogram means the chronological determination of an important event that occurred in history with a systematic, called abjad calculus, created by assigning a numerical value to each of the Arabic letters. Of course, when a poet makes this determination, he uses poetry, which is his basic instrument, instead of using numbers. The tradition of dropping dates, which was first determined in the 15th century, continues today. There are many poets known as the masters of making history in classical Turkish literature. Bursalı Haşimî, Seyyid Osman Surûrî and Antepli Aynî are among the poets who gave the best examples of this genre. Kandî, who grew up in the Ottoman society in the 16th century, is one of the most praised accounts of the sources. We have very little information about the life of Kandî, which we know about through the 16th century biographers. Examples of his poems and histories are found today in poet tezkires and poetry journals. The common opinion of the Tezkire about the poet is that he is known for his historical poems rather than his poems and that he gained his reputation in this way. Therefore, in addition to his title as a poet, the phrase muverrih is frequently used for Kandî. Of course, academic studies have been conducted on the poems of most of the poets who dropped history, except Kandî. However, while we have divans or other works of poets studied, we obtain the remains of Kandî's works from other sources. In this study, it will be tried to give information about the historical poems of Kandî based on the limited information obtained from seven tezkires written in 16th century.