Mir’âtü’l-Ahlâk By Bostanzâde Yahyâ Efendi

Mir’âtü’l-Ahlâk by Bostanzâde Yahyâ Efendi, a seventeenth century author, is a prose type and didactic book of morals consisting of twenty-four chapters, each dealing with an aspect of morals from a religious, mystical and philosophical perspective. The topics that the book handles include virtues such as prayers, patience, thankfulness, bravery, intelligence, seriousness, consent, loyalty, secretiveness, generosity, forgiveness, chastity, modesty, coyness, confidence, compassion, protectiveness, consultation, softness of manner, industriousness, foresight, seizing opportunity, caution, establishing good rapport with the good, and abiding by the law and obligations originating from official duties such as emirate, vizierdom, governorship and kingdom. The book contains Arabic, Persian and Turkish poetry of moral and judgmental nature between sentences, is embellished with exemplary parables from prophets’ lives and Islamic history and makes quotations from prominent philosophers and scholars such as Plato, Avicenna and Hüseyin Vâiz-i Kâshifî. The book contains 854 poems and 113 parables. In this study, describes major aspects of Mir’âtü’l-Ahlâk by Bostanzâde Yahyâ Efendi, focuses on its contents of chapters. Dr., Selçuk Ü. Ed. Fak. Türk Dili ve Ed. Böl. El-mek: nurgulsucu@selcuk.edu.tr