London British Library Add. MS. 7882

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Manuscript Identification
Reference Number	40Vezir3
Location	London, British Library
Siglum/Shelfmark	Turkish Manuscripts Additional MS 7882
Page/Folio range	1-261

Textual Content and Tradition
Standardised title of narrative	Ḥikāyet-i Erba‘īn Ṣubḥ u Mesā
Incipit or textual title	Hikayet-i arba'in subh u mesa - حكايت اربعين صبح و مسا
Version (siglum)	Forty Viziers: Ḥikāyet-i Ḳırḳ Vezīr
└ Language Group within Version	Turkish Forty Viziers
└ Narrative/Scholarly Group within Version	Ahmed-i Mısrî: Forty Viziers
└ Further scholarly subgroup (1)
└ Further scholarly subgroup (2)
Translated/adapted from (Version/Text)
Source for information on textual relationship to broader tradition	St Andrews catalogue: https://www.islam-anatolia.ac.uk/data/documents/UK add 7882 (St Andrews catalogue: https://www.islam-anatolia.ac.uk/data/documents/UK_add_7882)

Languages
Language of text	Turkish
Regional or specific Language of text
Source for regional or specific Language of text

Digitisation and Editions
Digitisation
Modern Editions	Kızıltan, Kırk Vezir Hikâyeleri (1991)

Note

See Rieu (1888) pp. 216-19 for details on the story order in this manuscript, and the corresponding parallels to those stories in Gibb and Behrnauer. They are also replicated in the BL catalogue, which states: "This volume contains an Ottoman Turkish translation of the well-known tale entitled in Arabic Ḥikāyat arbaᶜīn ṣubḥ wa masāᵓ,by Aḥmad Maṣrī. The story is also commonly known as The Story of the Forty Viziers (Hikayet-i Kırk Vezir or Kırk Vezir Hikayesi). It is an expansion of an old Indian tale, the Persian version of which is called Kitāb-i Sindbād or Sindbād-nāmah. The main narrative is the same in both: a young prince, falsely accused by his stepmother, is under a death sentence. He is defended in turn by the king's Vezirs (seven in the original work, forty in the expanded version), who, in the morning of as many days, endeavor to allay the king's wrath with appropriate tales, while in the evening of each day, the queen strives, by similar means, to hasten the prince's demise. The groundwork is used as a convenient frame for the insertion of tales of the most varied character and origin, many of which have no perceptible bearing on the supposed object of the narrator. The original Ottoman Turkish version purports to be a translation of the Arabic original, which appears to be lost. The translator, who calls himself Ahmet Mısri in the present copy as well as in those found in Vienna, Leipzig and Saint Petersburg, is also known in other copies by his mahlas, Şeyhzade. In the preface, after praising the reigning sovereign, Sultan Murat İbn-i Mehmet İbn-i Bayezit Han (Murat II, 824-855 AH/1421-1455 CE), he says that the fittest gifts to be presented to His Majesty were books of wisdom. 'For that reason, I, Ahmet Mısri, made for the Sultan of the age a neat copy of the book entitled Hikayet-i arba'in subh u mesa and translated it from the Arabic into the Turkish tongue, so that the Padişah of the world might read with ease the graceful thoughts and phrases, the rhymes and assonances, the pertinent tales and apt quotations, etc., of my book.' Copies of the Forty Vezirs vary considerably with regard to the subjects and the arrangement of the tales. In both respects, the present manuscript agrees with Bernhauer's translation, but its text is rather fuller, and some of the tales are different. The following shows the eighty tales it compromises by day: 1st day: The Sultan of Egypt and Şeyh Şihabeddin (f 12); The well-educated prince and the spoiled prince (f 20r) 2nd day: The merchant and the parrot (f 24v); the half-witted prince and his tutor (f 26v) 3rd day: The three princes put on trial by their father (f 29r); the illegitimate prince healed by coarse diet (f 39r) 4th day: Moses and Uj İbn-i Anak (f 42v); Hızır and the sham Sufi (f 45v) 5th day: Samson and his wife (Delile) (f 48v); the potter's fair son and the Maghribi (f 51v) 6th day: The tailor and his wife (f 55r); the illegitimate son of the merchant's wife and a robber (f 58r) 7th day: The wise and foolish Vezirs (f 62r); Sultan Alauddin's visit to the madhouse (f 65v) 8th day: The merchant who mated the girl he enslaved with an ape (f 68r); the three princes and the jewel casket (f 70v) 9th day: The hermit and the thief (f 73r); the three princes and their father's enigmatic will (f 74v) 10th day: The crafty woman and the merchant (f 78r); the king and the truthful shepherd (f 81v) 11th day: The tailor prince and the stingy merchant (f 85r); the merchant's legacy and his two prodigal sons 12th day: The king and the Vezir's handsome son (f 92r); the hermit Barsisa and the princess (f 95v) 13th day: Ayas and the Dervish (f 100r); the king and the invisible turban (f 103r) 14th day: The prince under an evil star and his two sons (f 105r); the king who had two good sons and a wicked one (f 112v) 15th day: The tailor's wife and the cotton carder (f 166r); the hashish eater (f 118r) 16th day: Halit and the monk (f 120v); Abu Ali Sina and the mice (f 125r) 17th day: The ploughman and the treasure (f 127r); the king's clever favourite and the Subaşi (f 129v) 18th day: Harut and Marut (f 131r); the widow's lazy son and the musician (f 133v) 19th day: The princess in love with the page (f 137r); the prince who died of a bone on the heart (f 140r) 20th day: Aydin Bey and the Dervish (f 142v); Sultan Mahmud and Hasan Meymendi (f 145v) 21st day: Hannas, the son of Iblis (f 148v); the youth who was one of the forty sharpers in Baghdad (f 151r) 22nd day: Sultan Mahmud and the bold beggar (f 154v); the cobbler and the princess (f 157r) 23rd day: Hasan Basri and the Kaysar of Rum (f 162v); the gardener, his son, and the ass (f 166r) 24th day: The king and the poisoned lancet (f 167v); the weeping Turkish peasants (f 167v) 25th day: The queen who hid her lover in a chest (f 173r); Seyit Ruknudin and the Aptal a-hawking (f 175r) 26th day: The fair prince and the enamoured Aptal (f 177v); the king's favourite who ate garlic (f 182r) 27th day: The merchant's son and the magic mirror (f 185v); Lokman thrown into a pit (f 191r) 28th day: Dellet el-Muhtale and her two husbands (f 195r); the old man who praised his ass' wisdom (f 200r) 29th day: The water-carrier, Umyan, who gave a camel to his son's teacher and found a treasure (f 202r); the king and the formidable-looking recruit (f 206r) 30th day: The woodcutter and the shrew (f 207v); Moses in search of a wiser man than himself (f 210v) 31st day: The silk-merchant's wife who sent her husband up a tree and dallied with her lover in his sight (f 214v); the merchant who played chess with the Frank (f 215r) 32nd day: Keykubad and his devout wife (f 218r); the fleas complaining of men before Soloman (f 220r) 33rd day: Abraham, Ishmael and the Devil (f 222v); the bragging Horasani put to shame by his son (f 224r) 34th day: The Arab who offered a goat for sale (f 226v); the devotee who broke his jar (f 228r) 35th day: The carpenter who surprised his wife with her lover (f 230r); the merchant who shut up his son in his warehouse (f 232r) 36th day: The blind man who found Harun er-Reşit's jewel-casket (f 235r); the four sons changed to animals for disobeying their father's order (f 237r) 37th day: The youth who went after a fair maid and found himself in Hell (f 238r); the two rival Kadılar of Cairo (f 240v) 38th day: The dervish and the youth who slew the forty robbers (f 242v); the king changed into a parrot 39th day: The Persian merchant who kept his wife and his dog in chains (f 249v); Noah, the deluge, and the ark (f 251r) 40th day: The Sultan of Egypt and the discontented wives (f 253v); the Sultan of Egypt who, after fleeing before the rebels, recovered his kingdom (f 254v) There are numerous glosses in Italian and Greek found in between the lines and in the margins, as well as the transcription of several words and phrases. These are likely due to François de Dombay. The manuscript was likely copied in the 17th century CE." [Added by Jane Bonsall]

Authorship and Production
Scribe
Author	Ahmed-i Mısrî
Place of Manuscript Production
Date of Manuscript Production	1601 - 1700
Source of Date of Manuscript Production

Physical Description
Material	Paper
Total pages/folios in Manuscript	261
Height	260
Width	165
Script style/form	Nesih
Prose or verse	Prose
Illustrations	No

Contents and Additional Texts
Other texts in the Manuscript

Catalogues and Research Literature
Catalogue	St Andrews catalogue: https://www.islam-anatolia.ac.uk/data/documents/UK add 7882 (St Andrews catalogue: https://www.islam-anatolia.ac.uk/data/documents/UK_add_7882), https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/fe50b2bd-d81f-3bfa-a797-d44e0cb4ac75?component=dbe698c3-db3d-30f7-be01-774f93603d1e, Rieu (1888), https://searcharchives.bl.uk/catalog/032-003689084
Modern Research Literature	Kızıltan (1991), Gibb (1886), Gara (2024)

Pattern of embedded stories in this manuscript
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