LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

the place of Dimitri Kantemiroglu’s turkish in 18 th
Century ottoman turkish
1. Kantemiroglu and his time
SÜer eKer
It is certain that today’s romania and Moldova are not countries
populated by communities of turkic and romanian speakers unfamiliar
with each another’s language in the periods before the ottoman empire
(see eker 2009). Wallachia, Moldova and transylvania (Eflak, Bogdan and
Erdel in turkish) have had significant contacts with latin, Slavic, turkic
and uralic peoples and languages during the last millennium. nevertheless,
more concrete contacts between turkic languages and romanian belong to
the ottoman period. It is known that especially in the 17 th and 18 th centuries
ottoman turkish permeated romanian, the only latin language of east
europe and the Balkans, and that it spread throughout Wallachia and
Moldova, and partially throughout transylvania.
As his surname indicates, the Moldovan hospodar Dimitri Kantemiroglu
is the exemplary historical personage of the linguistic and cultural contacts
between turkic peoples and the romanians. there exists a common opinion
that the surname Kantemiroglu, which is also widespread among turkic
communities other than those in turkey, is of tatar turkic origin, and that
it is the ‘Christianized’ version of Khan Timur in turkic (Auty, obolensky
1981). In other words, Kantemiroglu’s times also designate a period in which
turkish/turkic-romanian cultural and linguistic relations flourished (see the
ottoman cultural and daily life in the Kantemiroglu era, in Faroqhi 2005).
2. The ways in which Kantemiroglu is perceived in Turkey
the traces of Kantemiroglu in the ottoman sources are scarce and
inadequate. In these sources, while Kantemiroglu’s standing as a scientist