„O Mohammed, sie sagen wir sind mangelhaft!”—Osmanische Dichterinnen nicht auf den Mund gefallen?

Abstract

Two Ottoman – Turkish proverbs attest that there were two divergent views on women's intellectual powers. One was the strictly orthodox view of the superiority of men as stated in sura 4, verse 34 of the Koran and commented upon in a Hadith. The other view, more favourable to women, was adopted by at least some Islamic mystics. On the ground that some women were able to attain ‘the (higher) level of men’, women in general were attributed a greater intellectual potential. By making the ‘level’ attained by an individual the criterion for his or her classification, a more complex interpretation of the concepts ‘men’ and ‘women’ was reached, and this made the elevation of women possible while still conforming to the letter of the Koran and the Hadith. Poems by two Ottoman poets four centuries apart show that the degree of acceptance of this favourable attitude could be far from satisfactory, at least to spirited people. Mihrī Hātūn, a descendant of a Halvetī şeyh (d. after 16 March 1512), advocated this opinion most resolutely in one of her poems. Four centuries later the Bektashi poet Edīb Harābī (d. 1915 – 16) vehemently championed the women's cause in two poems which he even wrote under feminine pseudonyms.