Translating text and date on a Ottoman dagger

[Drabant1701]

[QUOTE=mariusgmioc]I reached precisely the same conclusion!

What etchant do you use?

I dipped it 5-10 seconds i ferric chloride. Only one etching, etched super quick.
Then baking powder and lots of water, and lots of oil.

[Drabant1701]

Two years have past since I made this post and now I finally got a translation of the text on the dagger. So for anyone who my find this thread in the future I will update the post. The translator said that he thought the scripture was from the kurds in Turkey and this is the translation he provided:

The first line reads:
The key is in the dagger that he placed in his armor
The second line reads:
The head of the prey is out there for everyone to see
The third line reads:
You, the young one, are where the lover heads to do his prayers.
The last sentence reads:
The idol whom we praise is her beautiful face.


I was hoping for the makers or the owners name, but this will do

Btw for some reason this page flips the text on the dagger so its upside down. I was going to repost the picture in this reply, but it allways ends up upside down no matter how i rotate it before I post

[kwiatek]

These verses are a variant of ones found on an earlier, 16th-century piece in the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. The person who read them for you has tried to make sense of them as Persian, whereas in fact they are in Turkish and read as follows:


Hatt değildür hanceri üzre görünen aşikâr

Katline ‘uşşakının içün hüccet çıkarmış ol nigâr

In English:

“What is visible on his dagger is not writing/the down on a cheek,

It is rather proof that the beautiful-faced one has produced for the murder of his beloveds.”

It’s hard to translate because it makes use of wordplay and belongs to the world of classical Turkish poetry that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you’re not familiar with the imagery. The dagger is compared to the beautiful face of the beautiful but cruel and indifferent beloved. In classical Persian and Turkish poetry the beloved’s face typically has a fine down on it, which is a sign that the beloved is in the bloom of youth and beauty. There is a wordplay in that the word for “down” is a also the word for “writing” (hatt). The poet says that in fact that what you see on the dagger/face is not down/writing, it is proof of the beloved’s murder of all of his lovers.

For the dagger in Budapest see the following link

https://collections.imm.hu/gyujtemen...emenyebol/1120

[kronckew]

Images frequently have hidden 'metadata' information added to the initial encoding to specify rotation, and info on exposure, colour types, and even photographer. Your graphics editor may have EXIF settings you can turn on or off.

EXIF Info for YOUR photo:

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[IOP]
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[Makernotes]

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'RIOT' optimized and rotated: EXIF data removed:

[Drabant1701]

Originally Posted by kwiatek

These verses are a variant of ones found on an earlier, 16th-century piece in the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. The person who read them for you has tried to make sense of them as Persian, whereas in fact they are in Turkish and read as follows:


Hatt değildür hanceri üzre görünen aşikâr

Katline ‘uşşakının içün hüccet çıkarmış ol nigâr

In English:

“What is visible on his dagger is not writing/the down on a cheek,

It is rather proof that the beautiful-faced one has produced for the murder of his beloveds.”

It’s hard to translate because it makes use of wordplay and belongs to the world of classical Turkish poetry that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you’re not familiar with the imagery. The dagger is compared to the beautiful face of the beautiful but cruel and indifferent beloved. In classical Persian and Turkish poetry the beloved’s face typically has a fine down on it, which is a sign that the beloved is in the bloom of youth and beauty. There is a wordplay in that the word for “down” is a also the word for “writing” (hatt). The poet says that in fact that what you see on the dagger/face is not down/writing, it is proof of the beloved’s murder of all of his lovers.

For the dagger in Budapest see the following link

https://collections.imm.hu/gyujtemen...emenyebol/1120

Thank you Kwiatek for clearing that up! I knew that the translator had a hard time making sense of it, but he gets an A for effort

And thank you Kronckew for flipping my photo!

[motan]

Hi Peter,
Museum quality and nice prose too. Excellent. Nothing to add to the words of the educated gentlemen, except that to me, the date looks like 1215, which translates to 1800/1801 Gregorian.