The Ottoman art of word-painting. Rhyme and reason in seventeenth-century Turkish literary letters

Among highly-educated Ottomans letter-writing was not simply a means of practical communication but an art in itself and a significant aspect of Ottoman literary culture. Collections of exemplary letters from the seventeenth century survive in considerable numbers, but they have been neglected as literary and historical sources due largely to the complexity of their rhymed, rhetorical prose and to a modern belief that they were mostly empty bombast. This article, based on a composite collection of letters by the six most eminent writers of the 1620s, examines the nature of this kind of prose, known as insa (construction, creative composition), and the purposes behind such letters. It assesses how contemporaries evaluated such writing and why it was admired; how rhetorical prose might contribute to the maintenance of friendships; and how petitions in the form of literary letters helped create essential patron-client relationships.