Poet and writer (b. 1826, İstanbul – d. 13 April
1871). His real name was İbrahim Şinasi. He completed his primary school
education at Provincial Children’s School and
Şinasi, one of the founders of Tanzimat
Literature, apart from his poetry, has an important place in Turkish
Literature in terms of introducing Western works to Turkish Literature for the
first time. In order to make Western poetry known he did the first poetry
translations from French. He was also the author of the first Turkish
theatrical work, Şair Evlenmesi
(Marriage of the Poet). He published the first Turkish newspaper with Agah
Efendi and was the first columnist. Although he stayed faithful to the style of
Divan* poetry, he used Western concepts for the first time in poetry. For
prose, instead of building long, sophisticated and complex sentences, he
preferred a simple and clear expression. He was also the first to use
punctuation. He also worked on dictionaries and compilations.
WORKS:
Tercüme-i Manzume (Translation of Poetry, 1859, republished by Süheyl Beken, 1960), Şair Evlenmesi (Marriage of the Poet, 1
act comedy, 1860; republished by Fevziye Abdullah Tansel, 1960), Müntahabat-ı Eş’ar (Selection of Poems,
1862; republished by Süheyl Beken, 1960), Durub-i
Emsal-i Osmaniyye (Ottoman Proverbs, 1863; republished by Ebüzziya Tevfik
with the addition of 4 thousands proverbs, 1885), Müntahabat-i Tasvir-i Efkar (Selected Articles from the newspaper Tasvir-i Efkar, 3 volumes, collected by
Ebüzziya Tevfik, 1885; republished by Abdullah Tansel under the name Makaleler -Articles, 1960).