Narration Beyond Genres: The Military Memoirs of Kabudlu Mustafa Vasfi

Abstract

ㅤOne of the manuscripts in the rich collection at Leiden University Library was written by a cavalry soldier named Kabudlu Mustafa Vasfi. He was a deli (irregular horseman) in the Ottoman army in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and travelled to many places in the eastern Anatolian and Balkan regions. In 1834 Kabudlu wrote a work called Tevārīḫ, in which he discusses his travels and memories. In the manuscript, he states that he composed the tevārīḫ (chronicle) as an account of the cities he visited and the wars he witnessed. In this article, I discuss the reasons why a deli soldier would pen his memoirs by considering the context of Ottoman book culture in the nineteenth century. The place that chronicles, autobiographies and travelogues occupied in that period is worthy of greater attention, and they shed light on how the narratives of an Ottoman soldier were influenced during the transformation from manuscript culture to the era of the printing press. In that regard, by analysing the manuscript, which was written on the eve of print capitalism in Ottoman territories, I try to answer the question of why Kabudlu Mustafa Vasfi referred to his extraordinary travel notes as a chronicle (tevārīḫ). Besides examining two journeys, namely the travels of the author as well as the travels of the manuscript itself, I also discuss other travelogues, chronicles, memoirs and diaries from that period to demonstrate the importance of this ego-document written by an irregular soldier within the context of Ottoman literary traditions.