OTTOMAN TURKEY, 18TH CENTURY

This text is the most famous dictionary of Turkish into Arabic and Persian, written by Shaykh al-Islam Mehmed Es’ad Efendi (d. 1753). He was the son of Shaykh al-Islam Abu İshaq İsmail Efendi and was born in 1685 in Istanbul. He enjoyed several of the highest positions in the Ottoman judicial system including the chief judgeships of Thessaloniki, Mecca and Medina as well as the chief military judgeships (kazaskerlik) of Rumelia and Anatolia. In 1748 he was appointed Shaykh al-Islam, from which position he was removed in the following year. He died in 1753 and was buried in the mosque his father had built next to the tomb of Sultan Selim. He was a prolific author and poet. His trilingual dictionary was the first such work to have the Turkish words as the headings, followed by their Arabic and Persian synonyms. It was completed between 1725 and 1732 and dedicated to Sultan Mahmud II. The work contains 3661 entries. An account of his life and works are found in Muhammet Nur Doğan,“Esad Efendi, Ebû İshakzâde”, İslâm Ansiklopedisi. Vol. 11, Istanbul, 1995, pp. 338-40.