Mehmed Süreyya

Mehmed Süreyya (محمد ثریا / İA Meḥmed S̲üreyyā ; * 1845 in Istanbul ; † January 12, 1909 ibid) was an Ottoman chronicler and biographer . His main work is the "Ottoman National Biography" (سجل عثمانی / Sicill-i ʿOs̲mānī ).

life and work

Mehmed Süreyya's father was the civil servant Hüsnü Mehmed Bey. Süreyya became a member of the translation department of the Sublime Porte in 1863 and was for a time an employee of the newspaper Cerīde-ʾi Ḥavādis̲ . On October 6, 1886, he was appointed to the Council of the Ministry of Education, where he remained until his death. His grave is in the Karacaahmet cemetery in Üsküdar .

As an author and compiler , he wrote over forty works, including a multi-volume Arabic - Persian - Ottoman - Chagataisch - Tatar dictionary. This extensive work as well as four novellas and some books on Ottoman and Islamic history were largely destroyed in a fire in 1916. In 1876 the first volume of his two-volume Nuḫbetü l-Veḳāyiʿ ("Selected Events" - for the period from 1831 to 1875) was published, the second remained unpublished.

His main work سجل عثمانی یاخود تذکرهٔ مشاهیر عثمانیه / Sicill-i ʿOs̲mānī yāḫūd Teẕkire-ʾi Meşāhīr-i ʿOs̲mānīye , a compendium in which the biographical data of famous personalities of the empire were recorded, appeared in four parts between 1890 and 1899. Each volume dealt with a specific group, according to status or occupation orderly. From the early Ottoman period to 1899, people of various classes and ranks were listed and described. In no other historical work or compendium are so many names and dates of less influential Ottomans mentioned. The name “Ottoman National Biography” therefore rightly exists.

annotation

Only the first volume of a modern Turkish version of the work by Mehmed Süreyya has appeared so far: Osmanlı Devletinde Kim Kimdi? (“Who was who in the Ottoman state?”), But was not continued.

See also

• List of Ottoman chroniclers

literature

• The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition (English)