EMĪN YOMNĪ, MEḤMED

 

EMĪN YOMNĪ, MEḤMED (Moḥammad Amīn); b. Solaymānīya in Persia, 1261/1845, d. Istanbul, 28 Šaʿbān 1342/5 April 1924), Turkish poet and man of letters who also wrote in Persian. He was born to one Aḥmad Efendī and received a madrasa education in Solaymānīya. In 1284/1867 he was appointed assistant chief clerk of the city, and he continued to serve in a variety of Ottoman administrative posts throughout his career. After moving to Istanbul, to a position in the Ministry of Fnance, he also taught Persian at the Eyüb Ruştiye (Ayyūb Rošdīya) middle school. Besides Turkish and Persian he knew Arabic, Kurdish, and French, and in 1287/1870 he joined the Bāb-e ʿālī translation bureau in Istanbul. Beginning in 1291/1874, he held a series of legal and consular posts in Ḵoy, Šahrazūr, Van, Mosul, and Jedda. In 1312/1895 he returned to Istanbul, where he eventually reached the hightest rank in the secretariat for consular affairs (İnal, pp. 1955-58).

Emīn Yomnī’s Persian poems are more successful than those in Turkish. They include Ketāb-e jaḏba-ye ʿešq: Taḵmīs-e Emīn Yomnī bar Dīvān-e Ḥāfeẓ-e Širāzi, in which he added four hemistichs to each hemistich in Ḥāfeẓ’s entire work (Istanbul, 1339/1921). Although it is recorded that he also composed a taḵmīs of the first volume of Jalāl-al-Dīn Rūmī’s Maṯnawī (Inal, p. 1955), no copy of the work is known to survive. In Tarjoma-ye ḥekāya-ye Haft peykar he expanded Neẓāmī’s celebrated work and translated it into Turkish in the form of a novel (7 vols., Istanbul, 1289/1872; 1 vol., Istanbul, 1345/1941); the work suggests that Neẓāmī could have been successful in this modern genre. Emīn Yomnī’s Montaḵabāt-e āṯār-e fārsī, a selection of Persian poems, has been published as an integral work within a larger series (Inal). He also translated into Turkish a selection of Persian proverbs.

His Turkish works include Tarkīb-e band, Qahramān Qatil, Našāyat al-aṭfāl, and Parda-ye asrār (Istanbul, 1330/1911).

 

Bibliography:

I. M. K. Inal, Son asır türk şairleri XII, Istanbul, 1971.

Türkiye’de basılmış farsça eserler: Çevriler ve iranla ilgili yayınlar bibliografyası, Millî Kütüphane yayınları 2, Ankara, 1971, pp. 970-71, 978.

B. M. Tahir, Osmanlı müelliferi III, Istanbul 1314/1925, p. 172.

(Tahsın Yazici)

Originally Published: December 15, 1998

Last Updated: December 15, 2011

This article is available in print.
Vol. VIII, Fasc. 4, pp. 15-416