Voices of the past: A study of the 'Saltukname' as it pertains to the cultural histories of the Crimea, the Balkans and Anatolia in the late thirteenth to the late fifteenth centuries

The Saltukname, an Old Anatolian Turkish prose narrative which records the life of a thirteenth-century dervish-warrior generally referred to by scholars as Sari Saltuk belongs to the later Middle Ages but has not been translated into a major Western language and has received scant attention by scholars.; My dissertation is a study of the Saltukname, hereafter referred to as the Book of Saltuk, based primarily on the manuscript housed in the Topkapi Museum Library No. 1612, as a source of cultural histories and memories.; In the introduction, I familiarize the reader with the various extant manuscripts of the Book of Saltuk and explain my choice of manuscripts. I also discuss the structure and the function of the work, attempting to demonstrate that the work should be considered a representative of a transitional genre lying somewhere between traditional heroic epics and the more standardized biographies of saints.; In Chapter one, I discuss two major themes that pervade the work: namely, Sherif's life, his battle with the Rafizis and his version of Islam.; In Chapter two, I discuss the advent of the Ottoman Empire and the demise of the Beyliks comparing the ways in which this process has been traditionally by scholars in Ottoman studies and the ways that it is depicted in the Book of Sherif Hizir.; In Chapter three, I present a summary of the entire work based on the Topkapi manuscript thus making the work accessible to both specialists and non-specialists alike.; I believe that this project will be a substantial contribution to our understanding of the problems integral to the history of Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Crimea during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of the House of Osman.