KĀMI MEHMED-I KARAMĀNI (Kāmi Mo-ḥammad Qaramāni; b. Karamān; d. Istanbul, 1545), Ottoman scholar, judge, poet, and translator. He was born in Karaman (Qaramān) in central Anatolia. He was the cousin of the famous Ḵalwati Sheikh Cemāl-i Halveti (Shaikh Jamāl Ḵalwati; d. 1493 or 1506). He was granted a ‘permission’ (ejāza-nāma) to issue religious rulings and teaching of Islamic law from the renowned Ottoman scholar Zenbilli ʿAli Efendi (d. 1526). He was offered a position as a judge (qāżi) and died in 1545 in Istanbul.
He translated the Yusof o Zolayḵā by Mawlānā Nur-al-Din ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān b. Aḥmad Jāmi (d. 1492) from Persian to Ottoman Turkish in verse form. In this translation he added verses from Vis o Rāmin and Vāmeq o ʿAḏrā (Latifi, p. 457). Only a few couplets are preserved from this work. Kınalı-zāde and Beyāni show that it had already been lost by the 16th Century (Kınalı-zāde, II, p. 815; Beyāni, pp. 231-32). Latifi praised the poetic arts of this translation (Latifi, pp. 457-58). His poetic talent was praised in various sources.
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(Osman G. Özgüdenlī)
Originally Published: December 15, 2010
Last Updated: April 20, 2012
This article is available in print.
Vol. XV, Fasc. 4, pp. 438-439
