[EARLY ISLAMIC SUKASAPTATI] Tutinâme [i.e. The book of parrot]. Narrated by Sari Abdullah Efendi

Translated into Persian by ZIYAEDDIN EL-BODAYUNI EL-HINDI [NAHSHEBÎ], (?-1350)., Matbaa-i Darü's-Saltanati's-Seniye (Matbaa-i Amire)., Kostantiniyye [Constantinople - Istanbul], [AH 1256] = 1840.

Original full leather bdg. in Islamic style with a flap. Demy 8vo. (22  15 cm). In Ottoman script (Old Turkish with Arabic letters). 285 p. Rebacked to spine, slight wear on binding. Overall a good copy.

Early Turkish edition of the book of parrot (or the book of Humayun), which is a 14th-century series of 52 stories, originally written in Persian, translated by Sari Abdullah Efendi (1584-1660), who was an Ottoman mystic poet and scholar.

The adventure stories narrated by a parrot, night after night, for 52 successive nights, are moralistic stories to persuade his female owner Khojasta not to commit any adulterous act with any lover, in the absence of her husband. She is always on the point of leaving the house to meet her lover until the loyal parrot detains her with a fascinating story. The authorship of the text of the Tutinama is credited to Ziya'al-Din Nakhshabi or just Nakhshabi, an ethnic Persian physician and a Sufi saint who had migrated to Badayun, Uttar Pradesh in India in the 14th century, and wrote in the Persian language. He had translated and/or edited a classical Sanskrit version of the stories similar to Tutinama into Persian, around 1335 AD. It is conjectured that this small book of short stories, moralistic in theme, influenced Akbar during his formative years. It is also inferred that since Akbar had a harem (of women siblings, wives, and women servants), the moralistic stories had a specific orientation towards the control of women.

The main narrator of the 52 stories of Tutinama is a parrot, who tells stories to his owner, a woman called Khojasta, in order to prevent her from committing any illicit affair while her husband (a merchant by the name Maimunis) is away on business. The merchant had gone on his business trip leaving behind his wife in the company of a mynah and a parrot. The wife strangles the mynah for advising her not to indulge in illicit affairs. The parrot, realizing the gravity of the situation, adopts a more indirect approach of narrating fascinating stories over the next fifty-two nights. The stories are narrated every successive night as an entertaining episode to keep Khojasta's attention and distract her from going out.

The Persian text used was redacted in the 14th century AD from an earlier anthology 'Seventy Tales of the Parrot'in Sanskrit compiled under the title Śukasaptati (a part of katha literature) dated to the 12th century AD. In India, parrots (in light of their purported conversational abilities) are popular as storytellers in works of fiction. (Source: Wikipedia).

Özege 21353., OCLC 165609299.