Joseph Scaliger’s Turkish Marginalia in Johannes Leunclavius’s Historiae Musulmanorum Turcorum (1591)

• In Event: Renaissance Multilingualism: Expressing Linguistic Hierarchies and Voicing Equivalences in Ancient and Modern Tongues

Abstract

The humanist scholar Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540–1609) is best remembered today for his contribution to classical philology and historical chronology. This paper will shed light on a lesser-known side of the grandiose yet somewhat enigmatic figure: his interest in learning Turkish. Scaliger’s comparative approach and unusual methodology in language acquisition will be discussed through his autograph marginalia in three languages (Latin, Greek and Turkish) found in Leunclavius’s Historiae Musulmanorum Turcorum, a large folio containing a plethora of information on Ottoman dynasty, military structure, place-names, customs and language. By bringing to attention this hitherto unknown copy that I recently discovered in Leiden’s Bibliotheca Thysiana, and comparing its annotations with those of the other volumes from Scaliger’s personal library, I aim to uncover the resourceful, enterprising and ingenious ways through which Scaliger learned Turkish at a time when dictionaries and grammars were scarce, native-speakers a rarity and formal teaching of Turkish unavailable.

Author

• Nil Palabiyik, John Rylands Research Institute, University of Manchester