Description

EDUCATION IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
RHYMING DICTIONARY OF PERSIAN
LANGUAGE
BULAQ IMPRINT

The Gift of Vehbi or Vehbî’s Rhyming Dictionary was a highly popular text, used to educate Ottoman children in Persian language, with a method of repetitive repeating and memorizing the text, a didactic routine at the time used by Islamic schools, madrasas, which employed memorizing the Quran as the basics of children’s knowledge. The western methods of presenting information to students only entered the Ottoman educational system in the second half of the 19th century.

The text was written by Sünbülzâde Vehbî (1718 – 1809), an Ottoman author and ambassador to Iran in 1783. It was printed over 50 times between 1798 and 1909. This is an early edition, printed by the Bulaq press in Egypt.

There were at least 7 editions of Tuhfe-i Vehbî printed in Bulaq between 1245 (1829) and 1282 (1865). The bibliography of Bulaq books, Hsu Cheng Hsiang, The First Years of Arabic Printing, does not mention this edition.

We could not trace any examples of this edition on Worldcat.

References: Not in: Hsu Cheng Hsiang, The First Years of Arabic Printing in Egypt 1238-1269. 1822-1851. The Checklist, no. 530; Cf.: Murat Umut Inan, Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations. Persian Learning in the Ottoman World.The Persianate World, The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca, 2019, p. 88.