طوطی نامه [Tûtînâme / Tales of a Parrot]

Description

Ziya’al-Din NAKHSHABI (14th century, att.).

طوطی نامه [Tûtînâme (also Tutanama, Tutuname or Tuti-name) / Tales of a Parrot]

[Istanbul:] Şirket-i Hayriye-i Sahafiyye 1301 [1885].

 

8°, 237 pp. lithograph with illustrated cover, [1 p.], with an illustration, later marbled paper wrappers (Sporadic pages brittle, with brown staining, cracks, tiny loss of paper in margins and small areas of text loss. The pink staining on some leaves comes from a pink marker inserted in the volume, while the staining around the spine is not red mould, but a common, harmless paper discoloration caused by pink wrappers on Ottoman books, last blank page wrinkled, some loss of white margins to sheets in the last part of the book.

This highly popular tale, which circulated across the Middle East in several versions and recalls the narrative world of One Thousand and One Nights, tells of a wife left alone at home with a parrot.The bird entertains her with stories, delaying her planned meeting with her lover until her husband returns.

The authorship of the Tutinama is attributed to Ziya’al-Din Nakhshabi, a Persian physician and Sufi saint who settled in Badayun, Uttar Pradesh, during the 14th century in India and wrote in Persian.

This is a handsome example of late 19th-century Ottoman lithographic popular printing, produced for a broad readership and illustrated with two images.

We could not find any institutional examples in Western libraries on Worldcat. Possibly identical as OCLC 843202214, dated 1307 and housed at Boğaziçi University Library and National Library of Israel.