Governmental and Administrative Terms and Titles in the Chronicle Zubdat al-Āthār
Zühal Ölmez, Sevim ErdemZubdat-al-āthār is a historical work which was written by Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Ali Nasrullāhī, in (Chagatai) Turkic, completed in 1525 and dedicated to Sultan Muhammad who was the son of Suyunch Khoja Khan. In the work the author mainly refers to primary sources to relate events which had occurred before his era. He also narrates some events that he personally witnessed and that he heard directly from eyewitnesses. The work’s original manuscript is missing; there are three copies which have survived. Information about a fourth copy of the work was announced to the scientific community by DeWeese in his work titled A note on manuscripts of the Zubdat al-āthār. As Zubdat-al-āthār is a chronicle, the author uses many governmental and administrative terms and titles which provide information about government organizations of the states of his period. In this study we will deal with the administrative terms that are attested in Zubdat-al-āthār with a focus on Timurid dynasty. Some of the terms we discuss in this paper are ınaḳ, ḳorçı, tovaçı, bitikçi.
Zübdetü’l-Âsâr Vakayinamesindeki Devlet Teşkilatı Terimleri
Zühal Ölmez, Sevim ErdemGenel tarih kaynağı olan Zübdetü’l-Âsâr, Abdullah bin Muhammed bin Ali Nasrullâhî tarafından Türkçe (Çağatayca) yazılmış, 1525 yılında tamamlanmış ve Süyünç Hoca Han’ın oğlu olan Sultan Muhammed’e ithaf edilmiş bir eserdir. Bu eserde yazar, kendi dönemine kadar olan birinci el kaynakları kullanmış ayrıca gördüğü olayları anlatmış, çağdaşı kişilerden dinlediklerini de eserine aktarmıştır. Aslı kayıp olan eserin elimizde 3 nüshası bulunmaktadır. Eserin 4. nüshasına ait bilgi, Devin DeWeese tarafından ilim dünyasına A note on manuscripts of the Zubdat al-āthār adlı çalışmasında duyurulmuştur. Burada değerlendireceğimiz sözcükler devlet teşkilatına dair terimlerdir. Eserin tarihî bir kaynak olması sebebiyle tarihî olaylar anlatılırken kullanılan terimler de bize o döneme ait devlet teşkilatı hakkında bilgi vermektedir. Bu makale kapsamında özellikle Timurlulara ait devlet teşkilatıyla ilgili belli başlı terimler (ınaḳ, ḳorçı, tovaçı, bitikçi vb.) üzerinden dönemin devlet teşkilatı ortaya konmaya çalışılacaktır.
Zubdat-al-āthār is a historical work which was written by Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Ali Nasrullāhī, in (Chagatai) Turkic, completed in 1525 and dedicated to Sultan Muhammad who was the son of Suyunch Khoja Khan. The author’s name is spelled as ʿAbduʼllāh bin Muḥammed bin ʿAlī Naṣruʼllāhī (358a-4) in the copy registered under the number 5368 in Tashkent, Al-Biruni Oriental Institute; and as ʿAbduʼllāh bin Muḥammed bin ʿAlī Naṣruʼllāh (2a-14) in the copy located in St. Petersburg. In Hofman’s catalogue, the entry of the name appears as Naşrallahi or Navallahi, ʿAbdallāh b. M. b. ʿA. (Hofman, 1969, 256-257). The author’s name is mentioned in some sources also as Mevlana Abdullah bin Ali-yi Belhî (Çelik, 2012: 101). We have limited information about the author’s life, which we can only obtain from his own work. The reasons which make the work significant are that the chapters about the periods before the author’s lifetime consist of a compilation from primary sources of those times; and the chapters about the events of his era are original as either he narrates the events he witnessed personally or he relates the narratives he heard from his contemporaries. The work consists of eleven chapters. The work’s original manuscript is missing but there are three copies which have survived, none of which are complete (information about a fourth copy of the work was announced to the scientific community by DeWeese in his work named A note on manuscripts of the Zubdat al-āthār). In spite of their incompleteness and late dates, these three copies are still very valuable thanks to their rich content. The author indicates that he had used the Uighur records of the Genghis dynasties (Tarikh-i Khani), beside many other sources previously written. This alone implies that this work may include information not available in other authorities. Being one of the most comprehensive prose texts in Chagatai Turkic the work has a rich vocabulary. Since it is a chronicle, it also reflects the political, social, economic and cultural events of the society. This article tries to explain what the duties and potencies of the institutions or persons were in the state organization based on the governmental and administrative terms and titles attested in Zubdat al-āthār. The presence of these terms and titles reflects the presence of order and stability in the state. The text used in this study is formed by comparing two copies, the one located in the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. (LOIV) and the one located in the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR, Tashkent. In this article we will deal with the terms attested in the 9th, 10th and 11th chapters. The paper consists of two parts. In the first part, after the introduction, brief information about Zubdat al-āthār is presented. In the second part, ‘Organization Terms’ attested in Zubdat al-āthār are discussed: 1. Terms Related to the Operation of the State Organization: ḳurıltay, divan; 2. Persons in charge of the functioning of the State Organization: yasavul, ınaḳ, ḳorçı, kötval ͠ kotval, bitikçi, tovaçı, ḳuşçı, aḫtacı, daruġa, yurtçı, mühr-dār’. Examples of words discussed in the article: The root of the word ḳorçı is the Mongolian word kor ‘a case in which arrowheads are put’. But in Chagatai dictionaries it is found under the article kur ‘belt’, and the meaning is given as ‘belt’ and ‘weapon’; namely two different words which need to be shown under two different articles are put together. Thus, the word meaning ‘weapon’ should be derived from Mongolian kor ‘a case in which arrowheads are put’ and it should be shown under an independent article. Therefore, the right reading of the word is ḳorçı and not ḳurçı as we see in some sources, since its base is kor. The meaning of the title kötval, which represents an important position in the state can be seen as ‘guard, watcher, castellan’ in all dictionaries. Albeit not with great certainty we nonetheless have reason to believe that there were two words with same meaning and similar spelling but with different etymologies in Chagatai texts: 1. kötval or kotval, derived from Hindi kotvala which passed to Turkish via Persian; 2. Keptevül, derived from the Mongolian verb kepte-. The fact that words are used in the same meaning with minor differences in spelling may weaken this approach. In this study, we believe that significant determinations have been made especially about the readings and etymologies of the words korçı, kötval and tovaçı, which can be found with different reading in different sources.
