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Mihri Hatun: A Women, A Poet, A Beloved

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Wednesday, February 17, 2016
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Didem Havlioglu
Wednesdays at the Center

"Since they say women lack reason
All their words should be excused.

An intelligent woman is much better than
A thousand ignorant men."
-Mihri Hatun

When Mihri Hatun (circa 1460-1515) claimed in her above-mentioned lines that it is not the biological sex of a person but intelligence what determines his/her potential, she was one of the only three women in the early-modern Ottoman literary circles. She is also the first Ottoman woman who collected her divan [poetry collection] and presented to Sultan Bayezid II who honored her with monetary awards. Mihri's existence as a woman poet in the overwhelmingly male literary world of the early-modern times is a curious instance as she does not only claim a space as a "woman," but a respected space as a Muslim woman in literary circles. Based on my comparative analysis of her and her contemporaries' writings, I argue, her success can be explained as follows: first, the Islamic literary aesthetics and intellectual history can allow gendered voices; second, as she was very well-versed in literary and religious texts, she knew how to legitimately stretch the limits of the aesthetic and intellectual traditions of her time.