These days, your common professor of Turkish language and literature hardly ever has a grasp of a Western language, whereas their expertise in studying or talking Eastern tongues – apart from Ottoman Turkish or the Turkic languages of Central Asia – is much more of a rarity. This is usually on account of the truth that the Turkish language and literature departments haven’t supplied international language programs to their college students for a very long time. Racist cultural insurance policies, a symptom of the early Republican period, purpose to steer the fledgling Turkish republic away from the thousand years of cultural ties it loved with the Islamic world, leaving consultants in the Turkish language and literature with superficial linguistic data. As a end result of such shallow goals, most of research regarding traditional Turkish literature mirror a mechanical customary specializing in stylistic or thematic interpretation. Turkish professors of our time usually lack the standard of crucial and comparative studying of texts, which is stage one of each linguistic and literary criticism.
On the opposite hand, Turkish professors raised earlier than the 1933 college reform, who had the prospect to expertise each the late Ottoman and early Republican eras, have been usually fluent in at the least two or three international languages, together with French, Arabic, German and Persian. Ottoman secondary and excessive colleges supplied language courses together with Arabic, Persian and French. For occasion, Mehmet Fuat Köprülü, the founder of the fashionable Turkish language and literature division at Istanbul University, realized these three international languages at college earlier than enrolling in regulation college. Perhaps one of the best instance of a Turkish professor with a treasure of international language data, nevertheless, was Ali Nihat Tarlan, who was awarded by the Pakistani and Iranian governments for his work regarding the literary traditions of each throughout the context of a wider understanding of Turkish literature.
Early life
Ali Nihat Tarlan was born in 1898 in the outdated Istanbul neighborhood of Vezneciler to a household of mental public servants from Dagestan. His grandfather, Pullu Hacı Ali Efendi, a wealthy man of Dagestan, migrated to jap Erzurum province, the place Tarlan’s father Mehmet Nazif Bey was born. Mehmet Nazif served because the army accountant for the Third Ottoman Army in the Macedonian province of Bitola.
Ali Nihat was schooled in Bitola whereas his father was stationed there. His father additionally taught him Arabic, Persian and an appreciation of literature in basic. Ali Nihat enrolled at a personal elementary college in Bitola. While at dwelling, he was schooled in French by a personal tutor. He recalled one event on the Rehber-i Maarif (Guide to Education) college, when he carried out a theatrical play in French to native army workers. As a reward for his novice efficiency, he was gifted some books – together with volumes of Turkish poetry, fiction and nonfiction.
Ali Nihat enrolled in the Military High School in Bitola, but needed to transfer to a French faculty in Thessalonica when his father was transferred there in 1909. The following 12 months, his father retired, and the household returned to Istanbul.
After graduating from the Vefa High School and serving as a army translator, he enrolled on the French, Persian and Turkish departments of the Darülfünun (Istanbul University). He earned his Ph.D. in Turkish literature with a dissertation on the legend of Layla and Majnun, a love story acquainted to all Islamic languages – together with Turkish, Arabic and Persian – thus turned the primary to carry a doctorate in literature in Turkey in 1922. Süleyman Nazif, a serious poet, wrote a particular article in reward of Tarlan’s dissertation.
Professor of three sorts of literature
Ali Nihat Tarlan taught Persian on the Mektebi Sultani (Galatasaray High School) throughout his years on the Darülfünun. After he earned his doctoral title, Tarlan started his profession as a instructor of French and Turkish in numerous excessive colleges in Istanbul, together with colleges belonging to the Armenian minority. He labored as a instructor for nearly 14 years.
Tarlan acquired his professorship due to a particular research on the poetry of Şeyhi, a 14th-century Turkish bard, at Istanbul University’s Department of Turkish Language and Literature in 1933, which was after the so-called college reform.
Tarlan turned a full professor of Turkish in 1941, changing İsmail Hikmet Ertaylan as head of the Old Turkish Department. He labored there till his retirement in 1972.
Tarlan was described as a hardworking researcher and a strict professor. His research embrace many textual criticism and commentaries of many classical Turkish authors reminiscent of Şeyhi, Nefi, Nabi, Nedim, Şeyh Galib and Ali Şir Nevai, in addition to the likes of Iranian and Pakistani authors, together with Firdausi, Muhammed Iqbal and extra.
Turkey’s Ministry of Education awarded Tarlan for his doctoral dissertation, whereas the Iranian authorities granted him the glory of Nişan-ı Ali Humayun (the Royal High Order) in 1973 and Pakistan honored him with the Nishan-e Pakistan (Star of Pakistan) in 1961 for his research on Iqbal.
Ali Nihat Tarlan died on Sept. 30, 1978, in Istanbul leaving greater than 20 works of criticism and commentary on the classical Islamic literature in Turkish, Arabic and Persian.
