A literary identity

In the conclusion to his biographical dictionary of poets, written around 1538, the Ottoman bureaucrat and poet Sehi Bey (1470–1549) explained the rise of a particular poetry in Anatolian Turkish by using the physical nature of its geographical location, “Rum”. Approximately 30 years later, in 1566, Aşık Çelebi (1520–72), a scholar and poet, further described Rum as “a target for Arabs and Persians and a source for Turkish and Deylamite poets”. In his introduction, he quoted many verses by bureaucrats and scholars of his time to support his claim that the climate of Rum was so conducive to poetry that even those Rum elite who lacked interest in poetry would burst into verse when faced with momentous events. For Sehi and Aşık Çelebi, Rum stood for western Anatolia and Rumeli, with Istanbul constituting its centre.