Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024): 250-339

Learning Middle Armenian at the Court of Meḥmed II: 
Language, Knowledge, and Power Before the Imperial Rise of 

Ottoman Turkish

Samet Budak and michael Pifer1

The University of Michigan

Abstract
Shortly after the conquest of Constantinople, the Ottoman court of Meḥmed II (r. 1444–46, 1451–81) began 
to produce language-learning primers that would teach significant languages of statecraft and knowledge 
production from around the Mediterranean world. This article sheds light on the court’s pedagogical and 
ideological engagement with multilingualism through one primer in particular, which bears the shelf mark 
Ahmet III 2698 in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. We name this primer Meḥmed II’s Hexaglot Grammar, as 
it was produced for his court and contains an array of languages within it: Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Ancient 
Greek, Byzantine Greek, Latin, and, finally, the vernacular tongue of Middle Armenian. The presence of many 
of these languages may seem more readily apparent, but what was Middle Armenian doing at the Ottoman 
court? As we show, Middle Armenian had a presence at court in more ways than one. Alongside the Hexaglot 
Grammar, the court also produced an extensive primer for learning the Armenian alphabet (MS Ayasofya 4767, 
Süleymaniye Library). So, too, did producers of knowledge in Middle Armenian find a home at court, such as 
Amirdovlat‘ Amasiac‘i, a physician whose extensive corpus of pharmacopeia in Middle Armenian likely made 
use of the palace library. By exploring the circulation of diverse manuscripts, translators, and intellectuals in 
Constantinople alongside primers such as the Hexaglot Grammar, this article offers a portrait of the Ottoman 
court never before seen: a place where the premodern Armenian vernacular not only survived, but, for a time, 
even thrived.

Introduction: Indices of Language Study in Constantinople

The Ottoman court of Meḥmed II (r. 1444–1446, 1451–1481) produced several language-
learning primers and grammars after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. One of the 
most fascinating and least studied primers from this period, which we name Meḥmed II’s 
Hexaglot Grammar, after the court that produced it, bears the shelf mark Ahmet III 2698 in 
the Topkapı Palace Museum Library.2 As a microcosm of Meḥmed II’s multilingual court, it 

1.  Authorship is listed in alphabetical order, in the collaborative humanities style, and not according to 
conventions of first or second authorship.

2.  The Topkapı manuscript that includes our Hexaglot (fols. 1v–47r) is part of a group of at least five extant 
sibling manuscripts containing language primers compiled at the Ottoman court of Meḥmed II. Although they are 
products of the same courtly project, they all vary in terms of the languages included and also their orthography 
and word choice. They are Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS or. oct. 33, and Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, MSS 
Ayasofya 4749, 4750, 4767. The Hexaglot Grammar and MS Ayasofya 4760 contain Armenian material, while 
others contain teaching material for different languages, such as Serbian and Arabic. Other manuscripts and the 
rest of the Topkapı manuscript also include supplementary pedagogical material which concerns the usage of 
those languages for different purposes. These materials primarily focus on ancient subjects, including science 
and philosophy, complementing Greek and Latin primers in particular. For more information, see Samet Budak, 

© 2024  Samet Budak and Michael Pifer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of  the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives License, which allows users to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes 
only, and only so long as attribution is given to the original authors and source.



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contains an array of languages within it, all of which were used for statecraft and knowledge 
production in the premodern Mediterranean world. These diverse languages are folded into 
a visual hierarchy according to size. Persian dominates the visual spectrum, inscribed in 
the largest pen-nib, providing an anchor for corresponding words in other tongues. At the 
other end of the spectrum, Ottoman Turkish takes up the least space, written in the smallest 
pen-nib and sprawling somewhat haphazardly in multiple directions. The remaining 
languages occupy a tidy lateral footing alongside one another. Without exception, they 
are carefully written and voweled in the Perso-Arabic script, using the same medium sized 
pen-nib and inked in different colors. From right-to-left, red ink is used first to delineate 
Byzantine and Ancient Greek, which appear side-by-side. Next, Latin appears in bluish-
green ink. Last comes the most unusual suspect in this lineup: Middle Armenian in orange 
ink (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Hexaglot Grammar, verbs. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, MS A 2698, 
2v–3r. Photo courtesy of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library.

“Teaching Greek, Studying Philosophy, and Discovering Ancient Greek Knowledge at the Ottoman Court in the 
Fifteenth Century,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 78 (2024): 355–96.



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At first glance, Middle Armenian may seem a strange bedfellow to the other prestige 
languages of the Mediterranean world. What business could the medieval Armenian 
“vernacular” have had at the early Ottoman court? Why did the early Ottomans desire to 
know medieval Armenian, and not only to speak it, but, as we will show, also potentially 
to read and to write it? In other words, why did the court of Meḥmed II engage in the 
preeminent form of premodern language cultivation—namely, the production of 
grammars—for vernacular Armenian, of all tongues? 

In this article, we take up these questions to paint an unlikely diptych. On one panel 
of this diptych is the portrait of a language that is often misunderstood in Anglophone 
scholarship—the medieval Armenian vernacular that precedes the modern Western 
Armenian vernacular—as it came to reside at the Ottoman court. By shedding hitherto 
unseen light on the activities of Middle Armenian’s speakers in late fifteenth-century 
Constantinople, correlating the knowledge production of a prominent Armenian physician 
at court with the manuscripts and pedagogies of the palace library, we offer a vital glimpse 
of the afterlife of a language that lost the kingdom which had fostered it, yet found a home 
on foreign shores. Far from being merely a “rustic” tongue, or a corrupted or simplified 
form of Classical Armenian (grabar, or the written language), Middle Armenian was a 
language of both statecraft and knowledge production in the medieval Mediterranean 
world. Its multifaceted position at the Ottoman court immediately following the conquest 
of Constantinople reflects its role as a specialist and professional language of physicians 
in particular, but also of knowledge production more generally. As we shall show, not only 
did Middle Armenian survive the fall of the Kingdom of Armenia in Cilicia in 1375 to the 
Mamluks, but it continued to have utility for both Armenians and non-Armenians alike, and 
in particular for specialist communities that used and even developed it in Constantinople.

Facing this panel on our diptych is a corresponding portrait of Ottoman language 
ideology during a moment of transition, as it evolved in the wake of the Byzantine 
empire’s collapse. As is well known, this was a period long before Ottoman Turkish came 
to serve as the main administrative language of the empire. In fact, Ottoman Turkish 
was only one language among many at court, residing on a hierarchical rung roughly 
alongside Slavic, below more prestigious languages such as Arabic, Persian, and Greek. 
We explore various reasons the Ottomans included Middle Armenian in this hierarchy 
of languages, yet we also nuance the Ottoman engagement with this spectrum of 
languages, which was not limited to the chancellery and diplomatic correspondence 
as is sometimes assumed. Thus, through our investigation into Middle Armenian in 
Constantinople in the late fifteenth century, we aim to offer a recalibrated perspective 
on the multilingualism of Meḥmed II’s court, which made room both for lesser-
studied languages such as Middle Armenian and for people who used those languages.  
    Of course, the court did not do this for altruistic reasons or even for a singular reason. 
One prosaic explanation for the presence of Middle Armenian in the Hexaglot Grammar, 
and indeed one occasionally posited to explain the court’s instruction in other languages 
such as medieval Serbian, is that the Ottomans wished to communicate with the diverse 



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speakers of their rapidly expanding territories.3 Still, though the Ottoman court preserved 
the ability to use Middle Armenian in some capacity, it is presently unclear to what degree, 
or even whether, they trained Armenian-speaking interpreters during this period. Another 
complementary explanation, which has more evidence to support it, is that these language 
primers suited the universalist ideology of the court, which embraced and incorporated 
Roman and Byzantine imperial heritage. As we shall see, Meḥmed II and his court presented 
themselves as rulers in command of the diverse languages of the broader Mediterranean 
world, and, crucially, in command of the bodies of knowledge that circulated in those 
languages. Moreover, the court was substantially invested in learning theology, history, 
philosophy, and medicine, as we shall discuss in detail, and did so in many languages. 
Finally, the court also ordered the service of diverse peoples who could give them access to 
those bodies of knowledge. One such figure is Amirdovlat‘ of Amasya (d. 1496), a prominent 
Armenian physician who wrote extensively in Middle Armenian and served at Meḥmed II’s 
court. Given the presence of elite Armenian figures like Amirdovlat‘ in Constantinople, we 
argue that the Armenian vernacular seems to have been more than only a communicative 
language of “the people,” or the general population who did not understand Classical 
Armenian, at least in the eyes of the court. Certainly, as we shall show, this was Amirdovlat‘’s 
own view of the Armenian vernacular, which he employed as a specialist language and even 
modified lexically to suit his needs. 

At the same time, figures such as Amirdovlat‘ did not operate in isolation. We therefore 
situate his prolific composition of medical dictionaries and pharmacopeia alongside the 
virtually unstudied and ignored Ottoman language learning materials on Middle Armenian. 
So, too, do we contextualize this activity alongside the work of other translators and 
polyglots at court, such as the Greek philosopher George Amiroutzes (d. ca. 1480) and 
the physician Yaʿḳūb Pasha (d. after 1481), an Italian who had converted to Islam from 
Judaism. Consequently, by bringing together disparate manuscripts and actors, we seek 
to offer a more holistic picture of the art of language learning in the palace schools, 
library, and scriptorium during this period, fashioning a portrait never before seen: an 
Ottoman court where, for an experimental moment in time, Middle Armenian thrived.  
    Before turning to the Hexaglot Grammar and the context in which it was created, it is 
necessary to address a deceptively simple question: What is Middle Armenian? The term 
is a modern one; premodern writers more readily called this language a gṙehik (vulgar) or 
gełǰuk (rustic) tongue.4 Amirdovlat‘ simply calls it ašxarhabaṙ, meaning both “vernacular” 
and “worldly speech,” as we shall discuss. It is often said that Middle Armenian was a 
language closer (or identical) to what the Armenian people actually spoke in the medieval 
period than Classical Armenian, which had become somewhat opaque to lay audiences 
and required study to use in any capacity.5 However, while there is much truth in this 

3.  For an overview of this scholarship and an insightful analysis of medieval Serbian in the context of the 
Ottoman court’s language learning primers, see the study by Marijana Mišević, “Writing Slavic in the Arabic 
Script: Literacy and Multilingualism in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2022). 

4.  Hrač‘ya Ačaṙyan, Hayoc‘ lezvi patmut‘yun (Yerevan: Petakan Hamalsarani Hratarakč‘ut‘yun, 1940–51), 2: 
229–31.

5.  For example, as the editors of the three-volume Heritage of Armenian Literature generally assert, “Part of 



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observation, it does not follow that Middle Armenian textual production was necessarily 
for the benefit of uneducated audiences. Likewise, Classical Armenian was not the only 
language of Armenian scholarship or study. 

In fact, since its earliest appearances in the manuscript record, Middle Armenian 
has been correlated with both statecraft and scientific knowledge production, and most 
specifically with medical knowledge. According to the linguist Hrač‘ya Ačaṙyan, the oldest 
extant text in Middle Armenian is a prescription for the treatment of the inflammation of 
the liver, prescribed by a physician named Busayid in the city of Mufarghin (in the region of 
Diyarbakır), which dates to 1037.6 Busayid’s patient Grigor was the son of Vahram Pahlawuni 
(d. 1045), the military commander-in-chief of the Bagratuni Kingdom of Armenia. Right 
from its known genesis as a written language, the story of Middle Armenian was inexorably 
woven across complex social networks that included both high-ranking Bagratuni officials 
and educated physicians such as Busayid. It was, in short, a language used by and for the 
elite, in addition to what other functions dialectal forms of Middle Armenian served more 
generally in colloquial and oral registers. Moreover, we possess some evidence that dialectal 
forms of Armenian may also have served as a language of Armenian medicine well over a 
century before this prescription was written.7

the movement toward secularization, especially from the twelfth century on, was the emergence of a new literary 
idiom: Middle Armenian, a diction that could be comprehended by the masses. Grabar (Classical Armenian) 
continued to exist alongside the various spoken dialects, however, and gradually became the language of the 
church, just as in western Europe Latin was gradually confined to the church and related areas of scholarship.” 
However, it is worth emphasizing that in the case of Classical and Middle Armenian, there existed an array 
of diverse interpretive communities in-between the broad poles of the clergy and the “people.” See Agop J. 
Hacikyan, Gabriel Basmajian, Edward S. Franchuk, and Nourhan Ouzounian, eds., The Heritage of Armenian 
Literature, Volume II: From the Sixth to the Eighteenth Century (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 
2002), 201, 702.

6.  Ačaṙyan, Hayoc‘ lezvi patmut‘yun, 2:233–4. See also the discussion in Łewond Hovnanean, Hetazōtut‘iwnk‘ 
naxneac‘ ṙamkōrēni vray: Usumnasirut‘iwnk‘ ew k‘ałuack‘ner. Vienna: Mekhitarist Press, 1897, 414–20. 

7.  Most notable is an Armenian glossary, written in the Latin script, that was discovered at the end of a 
Carolingian manuscript in 1882 by Henri Omont in Autun, France. The “Autun Glossary” contains many dialectal 
forms not found in Classical Armenian; based on paleography, the manuscript is dated to the late ninth or 
early tenth century, making it one of the oldest extant manuscripts that makes use of the Armenian language. 
Significantly, this glossary largely concerns terms related to human anatomy. It seems to have been dictated 
by an Armenian speaker to a scribe who did not understand Armenian. Anne Elizabeth Redgate has suggested 
the glossary may reflect the presence of an Armenian physician at the court of Louis III of Provence, though 
much mystery surrounds the glossary’s production. For select studies and bibliography, see also Henri Omont, 
“Manuel de conversation arménien-latin du Xe siècle,” Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 43 (1882): 563–64; 
Auguste Carrière, Un ancien glossaire latin (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1886); Robert H. Hewsenian, “The 
Autun Glossary,” Armenian Review 13, nos. 3–51 (1960): 90–93; Anne Elizabeth Redgate, “An Armenian Physician 
at the Early Tenth-century Court of Louis III of Provence? The Case of the Autun Glossary,” Al-Masāq: Islam and 
the Medieval Mediterranean 19, no. 2 (2007): 83–98. For a linguistic analysis of the dialectal features of the Autun 
glossary, with relevant discussion on medieval dialectal forms that may not necessarily be ancestors of Cilician 
Middle Armenian, see J. J. S. Weitenberg, “Armenian Dialects and the Latin-Armenian Glossary of Autun,” in 
Medieval Armenian Culture, ed. Thomas J. Samuelian and Michael E. Stone, 13–28 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 
1983).



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This through line, only a tendril before the fall of the Bagratuni Kingdom of Armenia in the 
mid-eleventh century, began to branch out to encompass a spectrum of actors in the next two 
centuries. After the fall of Bagratuni rule, both the Kingdom of Armenia and the catholicosate 
of the Armenian church became mobile, relocating to their new home in Cilicia, on the coast 
of the Mediterranean Sea. These migrating waves of Armenians from their ancestral lands 
brought dialectal forms of Middle Armenian with them; it is in Cilicia where the widespread 
adoption of Middle Armenian in writing began in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
preceding the literary configuration of Anatolian Turkish by about one hundred years. 
This strand of the vernacular later became known as “Cilician” Middle Armenian, though 
other strands developed in elsewhere in slightly divergent and heterogeneous forms.   
    It is worth observing that Middle Armenian is not a vernacular in the same sense that 
Old French is a vernacular, as the former exists along a spectrum with its classical language, 
whereas Old French is a separate language from Latin.8 Indeed, the medieval Armenian 
“vernacular” was sometimes initially not so different in writing from Classical Armenian, 
which was used as a literary language since the creation of the Armenian alphabet in the 
early fifth century CE. Gradually, however, Middle Armenian sloughed off the complicated 
declensions of its classical counterpart; admitted a series of new grammatical forms (most 
famously the ku particle in the present indicative and the imperfect tenses); and boasted a 
new lexicon of both dialectal Armenian words and loanwords of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, 
Old French, Greek, and Latin origin. These latter transformations especially reflected the 
dense cross-cultural environment in which Cilician Middle Armenian developed as a written 
language on the northeastern shores of the Mediterranean.9 The written development 

8.  On the concept of a “linguistic continuum” between a classical and putatively vernacular language, see 
Maria Mavroudi, “The Modern Study of Selfhood in Byzantium Compared with Medieval Europe and the Islamic 
World: Parallel and Diverging Trends in the Construction of ‘East’ and ‘West’.” Palaeoslavica XXX, nos. 1–2 
(2022): 234–304, at 265.

9.  On the development and forms of Middle Armenian, see the foundational studies Hovnanean, 
Hetazōtut‘iwnk‘ naxneac‘ ṙamkōrēni vray; Joseph Karst, Historische Grammatik des Kilikisch-Armenischen 
(Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1901); and Arsēn Aytǝnean, K‘nnakan k‘erakanut‘iwn ašxarhabar kam ardi hayerēn 
lezui (Vienna: Mekhitarist Press, 1866). On Middle Armenian’s grammatical development in a “literary” 
context, see also volume one (Ē. Ałayan, ed.) and two (G. B. J̌ahukyan, ed.) of Aknarkner miǰin grakan hayereni 
patmut‘yan (Yerevan: Haykakan SSH GA Hratarakč‘ut‘yun, 1972–75); and the study by G. B. J̌ahukyan, Hayoc‘ 
lezvi zargac‘umǝ ev kaṙuc‘vatsk‘ǝ (Yerevan: “Mitk‘” Hratarakč‘ut‘yun, 1969). Others have questioned terming 
Middle Armenian a “literary” language, stressing its non-standardized character; see Yuri Avetisyan, Grakan 
hayereni zargac‘man erku šrǰap‘ulerǝ: Grabar ev ašxarhabar (Yerevan: EPH Hratarakč‘ut‘yun, 2016). On the 
development of the Armenian language more generally, including its “Middle” period, see also Ačaṙyan, Hayoc‘ 
lezvi patmut‘yun, 2:226–54; Marc Nichanian, Âges et usages de la langue arménienne (Paris: Entente, 1989); and 
S. Ł. Łazaryan, Hayoc‘ lezvi hamaṙot patmut‘yun (Yerevan: Erevani Hamalsarani Hratarakč‘ut‘yun, 1954). See 
also the study by S. Ł. Łazaryan, Miǰin hayeren (Yerevan: SSṘ GA Hratarakč‘ut‘yun, 1960); and the invaluable 
dictionary of Ṙ. S. Łazaryan and H. M. Avetisyan, Miǰin hayereni baṙaran (Yerevan: Erevani Petakan Hamalsarani 
Hratarakč‘ut‘yun, 2009). For rich studies and relevant bibliography on the emergence of Armenian dialects, 
see especially J. J. S. Weitenberg, “On the Early Development of the Armenian Dialects,” in Proceedings of the 
Fifth International Conference on Armenian Linguistics, ed. Dora Sakayan, 93–118 (Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 
1996); J. J. S. Weitenberg, “On the Early Development of Armenian Dialects II. The Monophthongization of Ay-,” 
Annual of Armenian Linguistics 20 (1999–2000): 1–26; Werner Winter, “Traces of Early Dialectal Diversity in Old 
Armenian,” in Ancient Indo-European Dialects: Proceedings of the Conference on Indo-European Linguistics, ed. 



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of the Armenian vernacular in medieval Cilicia might therefore generally be likened to 
the emergence of Byzantine Greek, which similarly exists along a spectrum with its own 
classical language. The salient difference is that Byzantine Greek was not generally used 
for scientific, medical, or juridical knowledge production, but rather for literary and poetic 
purposes at this time.10

Right from the start, Middle Armenian’s history would travel another path, both within 
and beyond the Armenian court, where it served as a primary language of knowledge 
production—especially in the medical field. For example, the physician Mxit‘ar Herac‘i (d. 
ca. 1200) composed one of the earliest books in Middle Armenian in late twelfth-century 
Cilicia, known as J̌ermanc‘ mxit‘arut‘iwn (The Consolation of Fevers), which would later 
be cited and studied by Amirdovlat‘ in Constantinople. Likewise, when the theologian 
Vardan Arewelc‘i (d. 1271) lived in Cilicia, King Het‘um I (r. 1226–1270) commissioned him 
to compose the Žłlank‘, an encyclopedic compendium with entries on language, zoology, 
astronomy, music, botany, and many other subjects, for his personal study. Although 
Vardan was a doctor of the Armenian church and highly erudite in Classical Armenian, he 
wrote the Žłlank‘, which was completed by 1246 and has been copied many times since, in 
the king’s vernacular, Middle Armenian.11 The production of medical knowledge in Middle 
Armenian even extended to Syrian physicians in Cilicia, including such figures as Išōx and 
Faraǰ, who lived in the late thirteenth century and composed books on subjects ranging 
from anatomy to the natural world.12 Middle Armenian was used especially by the Cilician 
chancellery in Sis, which issued trading privileges in the vernacular to the Genoese, Sicilians, 
and merchants of Montpellier that are still extant today; these documents crisscrossed 
the Mediterranean Sea on merchant vessels, bearing the names of Armenian kings.13 The 
privileges also address other Armenian officials at the Cilician customs-house in the port of 
Ayas, in addition to issuing instructions to the harbor-master and royal court, indicating the 
widespread utility of the Armenian vernacular as an administrative language in the affairs 
of the kingdom. In these and many other ways, Middle Armenian became a companion to 
power for the first time, though far from the last.14

Henrik Birnbaum and Jaan Puhvel, 201–211 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966). For a critical overview 
of Armenian dialectology more generally, see also J. J. S. Weitenberg, “Aspects of Armenian Dialectology,” in 
Present-day Dialectology: Problems and Findings, ed. Jan Berns and Jaap van Marle, 141–157 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 
2002).

10.  For a valuable assessment of Byzantine Greek from the perspective of literary history, see Panagiotis A. 
Agapitos, “Greek,” in Literary Beginnings in the European Middle Ages, ed. Mark Chinca and Christopher Young, 
255–75 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

11.  For a detailed assessment of the Žłlank‘, see P‘aylak Ant‘abyan, “Vardan Arevelc‘ow “Žłlank‘ǝ”,” Banber 
Matenadarani 8 (1967): 157–81.

12.  For a short overview of these figures, see Stella Vardanyan, “The Medical Heritage of Cilician Armenia,” 
in Armenian Cilicia, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian and Simon Payaslian, 275–96 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 
2008), 276.

13.  See Victor Langlois, Le trésor des chartes d’Armenie ou Cartulaire de la chancellerie royale des Roupeniens 
(Venice: Mekhitarist Press, 1863), 154–58, 178–79 185–90. 

14.  For a detailed social history on the development of Middle Armenian at the Cilician court, and also the 
royal use of Middle Armenian as a language of study, see the forthcoming article by Michael Pifer, “The King’s 



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When the Cilician state fell to the Mamluks in 1375, effectively ending the last Armenian 
kingdom, the story of Middle Armenian did not come to a close. Instead, varieties of the 
medieval Armenian vernacular continued to spread, carried in part by the substantial 
number of scientific, medical, and other texts that still circulated in this “rustic” tongue. For 
now, a short observation must suffice: the thread that linked Middle Armenian knowledge 
production and power, laid down by the Cilician court in Sis, would later be picked up 
indirectly by Meḥmed II and his court, where it would be woven into a rather different 
linguistic tapestry.

Judging by the Hexaglot Grammar, the Ottoman court’s interest in Middle Armenian was 
far from superficial. In fact, the Hexaglot Grammar represents one of the earliest and most 
lexically detailed grammars in Middle Armenian that has yet been discovered. It also notably 
departs from many Armenian-made grammars that discuss Middle Armenian, in that it 
largely aims to teach the language from scratch, and does not reflect, say, on the finer 
points of syntax, or seek to furnish a philosophy of language.15 Instead, following a model of 
other language learning primers at court, it opens simply after a brief introduction with the 
verb “to know” in each of its languages: Persian (ــتن ــك) Turkish ,(دانس  Byzantine ,([bilmek] بیلم
Greek (ــْْوََرََما ــس) Classical Greek ,([ἐξεύρημα] اَْْکَس �س ــیسرَهَ) Latin ,([εἴδησις] اسیِذس  and Middle ,([scire] �س
Armenian (ْْدنــاَْْل  The Hexaglot then continues with a substantial .(see Fig. 2) ([գիտնալ] ْکس
mixed dictionary of infinitives and verbal nouns (depending on the language) before 
showcasing a wide array of conjugations, including the aorist and present tenses in 
Armenian (along with the negative forms of these tenses); verbal nouns (or their equivalents 
in other languages); commands and prohibitions; participles; and, most extensive of all, a 
dictionary of nouns that covers everything from the celestial sphere to botanical and animal 
names, along with a substantial number of words concerning the various parts of human 

Mellifluous Tongue: Study, Social Bonding, and the Making of Middle Armenian as a Language of the Elite in 
Medieval Cilicia,” Armeniaca: International Journal of Armenian Studies 3 (2024). 

15.  At least until the fourteenth century, grammars of Classical Armenian (grabar) were generally not 
language textbooks in any modern sense, but rather elaborate commentaries on the Tékhnē grammatikē (Art 
of Grammar) attributed to the foundational Greek grammarian Dionysius Thrax (d. 90 BCE). Middle Armenian 
generally did not make an appearance in such works until the early fourteenth century, when an anonymous 
scribe adapted the theologian Vardan Arewelc‘i’s Classical Armenian grammar into Middle Armenian (though 
both, ultimately, were commentaries on Dionysius Thrax). Likewise, it was not until the fourteenth century 
when Yovhannēs K‘ṙnec‘i, an Armenian member of the Fratres Unitores, which promoted unification of the 
Armenian and the Roman churches, composed a new grammar in an entirely different mold: not only did he 
do away with Dionysius Thrax, but his grammar presented many Middle Armenian grammatical forms for 
study. In other words, in a relatively short period of time, the medieval Armenian “vernacular” had become 
a tongue that was not only employed for statecraft, but to some extent had become an object worthy of study 
in its own right. Still, even works like K‘ṙnec‘i’s assume a great deal of linguistic knowledge on behalf of their 
readers, whereas the Hexaglot Grammar is truly a language primer in its elementary approach to grammatical 
instruction. For a detailed overview of the Middle Armenian contents of these grammars, see Pifer, “The King’s 
Mellifluous Tongue.” For an overview of Armenian grammars until the early medieval period, see S. Peter 
Cowe, “The Inception of Armenian Grammatical Thought out of the Matrix of Hellenic Paideia,” Jahrbuch der 
Österreichischen Byzantinistik 70 (2020): 465–86. See also the study by G. B. J̌ahukyan, K‘erakanakan ev ułłagrakan 
ašxatut‘yunnerǝ hin ev miǰnadaryan Hayastanum: V–XV dd. (Yerevan: Erevani Hamalsarani Hratarakč‘ut‘yun, 
1954). 



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anatomy. Its verbal lexicon is unabashedly Middle Armenian in character, as are its 
grammatical forms (which use the ku particle in the present tense), plurals (which employ 
the Cilician -ni as well as the Classical Armenian -k‘), conjugations of irregular verbs in the 
aorist, and so on across 47 well-sized folios.16 

Fig. 2. Detail. 
The verb “to know.” 

Topkapı Palace 
Museum Library, 

MS A 2698, 3r. 
Photo courtesy of 

the Topkapı Palace 
Museum Library. 

In fact, the Hexaglot Grammar follows an established pedagogy of language instruction 
at the palace school. The compilers of the Hexaglot Grammar did not devise it from scratch, 
but instead adapted the model of a Persian-Ottoman Turkish primer called the Kitāb-ı 
Dānistan (Book of Dānistan), which was named after its first entry in Persian; it is also 
named the Tuḥfetü’l-Hādiye in some copies. This primer was written before 1460 by an 
enigmatic author named Meḥmed ibn el-Ḥāc İlyās. Revealingly, in some manuscripts of the 
Dānistan, including the Hexaglot Grammar, the author notes that he compiled this work 
for children (ṣıbyān) at the palace school who had been learning Arabic and wanted to 
embark on the study of Persian.17 We can conclude that the Dānistan was likely written for 
young Turkophone madrasa students and those with comparable backgrounds. Originally, 
this book was a primer containing only Persian entries and their Turkish equivalents. The 

16.  For the Armenian infinitives of the Hexaglot Grammar, and a selection of its nouns, see the appendix to 
this article.

17.  Ahmet III 2698, 1v. In the Topkapı manuscript, the term “Arabic” is mistakenly dropped; for a copy 
containing the introductory note without this mistake, see Süleymeniye Library, MS Şazeli Tekkesi, 163.



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compilers of our Hexaglot Grammar took this book, whose efficiency they trusted, and 
scaffolded four more languages into its model, including Middle Armenian, likely sometime 
in the 1470s.18

A useful point of comparison for the Hexaglot Grammar is the Rasulid Hexaglot, a 
six-language dictionary in Arabic, Persian, Turkic, Mongol, Byzantine Greek, and Middle 
Armenian, produced for the Rasulid king in fourteenth-century Yemen. Both of these 
“hexaglots” represent clear examples of a non-Armenian court investing its resources 
to learn the Armenian vernacular. The production and reception of these two works, 
however, have been quite different. The Rasulid Hexaglot has been the subject of numerous 
studies, including a monograph, in recent years; its Armenian entries, limited to nouns and 
imperatives, were likely provided by Armenian-speaking slaves and servitors at court.19 In 

18.  The Hexaglot Grammar does not have a colophon and therefore cannot be dated precisely to the year. 
Its manuscript bears the seal of Bāyezīd II (r. 1481-1512) and was catalogued by the imperial librarian ʿAṭūfī 
(d. 1541), placing its terminus ante quem in the early sixteenth century. However, its codicological features, 
style, and, importantly, its sister manuscripts help to place its composition before Bāyezīd II’s rule. To give 
one example here, a useful point of comparison for Topkapı A 2698, the manuscript containing the Hexaglot 
Grammar, is Berlin MS (or. oct. 33), which likewise is an adaptation of the Book of Dānistan and probably predates 
the Hexaglot Grammar slightly. Not only does the Berlin MS name Meḥmed II in its preface, but its codicological 
features reveal that it was produced at the court scriptorium of Meḥmed II. The manuscript’s crimson velvet 
binding is a peculiar example of the court scriptorium bindings during this period, and is likely dateable to 
the 1470s, although its style and orthography may also suggest an earlier date of production in the 1460s. For 
similar bindings from the court scriptorium, see Julian Raby and Zeren Tanındı, Turkish Bookbinding in the 
15th Century: The Foundation of an Ottoman Court Style (London: Azimuth Editions, 1993), 169–81. The Topkapı 
manuscript, on the other hand, seems to have been rebound at least once and features a simplified orthography 
for its Greek language material. Still, the style of the Persian hand, the page layout, and the arrangement of the 
gilded chapter and subchapter headings make a strong case for placing the Topkapı manuscript in the 1470s, 
alongside the production of other primers in Meḥmed II’s court. For more information on dating the primer 
corpus, see Budak, “Teaching Greek.” Beyond the corpus of language primers that were clearly produced during 
Meḥmed II’s reign, other similar manuscripts support dating Topkapı A 2698 to the 1470s. Most notable is the 
Armenian script/alphabet primer known as MS Ayasofya 4767 and discussed below, which is confidently dated 
to 1474 and seems to have been produced alongside our Hexaglot Grammar. Likewise, for other manuscripts that 
share the same style as the Topkapı manuscript, such as gilded headings and interlinear writing, see also MS 
Ayasofya 4757, containing the famous ʿAtabetü’-ḥaḳāʾıḳ by Edīb Aḥmed Yüknekī, which was copied in 884 AH/ 
1479–80 in Chagatai and written in an archaizing Uyghur script. This manuscript represents another aspect of 
Ottoman antiquarianism concerning the East. Two earlier Persian examples which feature analogous styles are 
also worth mentioning. One is a Persian rhetoric book and grammar (Topkapı Palace Library, Ahmet III 1706), 
copied for Maḥmūd Pasha, and the other, a copy of Avicenna’s Dānishnāma-yi ʿalāʾī (MS Ayasofya 2531) copied 
in 1465. The Avicenna manuscript likely represents an earlier variant of the Hexaglot Grammar’s style, but it 
constitutes a useful case of comparison. In sum, the broader project of producing primers, based on the corpus 
of surviving manuscripts, can be dated to the last two decades of Meḥmed II’s reign. The court of Bāyezīd II, in 
contrast, oversaw another gradual shift in Ottoman language ideology, as it generally gave more prominence 
to Ottoman Turkish. Dating the Hexaglot Grammar to the 1470s thus seems plausible, especially given that its 
companion alphabet manuscript was copied in 1474. 

19.  For a detailed study of the Rasulid Hexaglot, see Peter B. Golden, ed., The King’s Dictionary: The Rasûlid 
Hexaglot: Fourteenth Century Vocabularies in Arabic, Persian, Turkic, Greek, Armenian, and Mongol, trans. 
Tibor Halasi-Kun, Peter B. Golden, Louis Legeti, and Edmund Schütz (Leiden: Brill, 2000). Other comparable 
attempts to record and study the Armenian lexicon by using the Arabo-Persian script include Evliyā’ Çelebi’s 



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comparison, Meḥmed II’s Hexaglot Grammar is far more detailed grammatically, despite 
receiving almost no scholarly attention. The Hexaglot Grammar also preserves more Middle 
Armenian than does the Rasulid dictionary, which tends to skew more toward a simple 
Classical Armenian lexicon. Finally and most important, Meḥmed II’s Hexaglot Grammar 
makes use of a vastly more sophisticated system in its transliteration from the Armenian to 
the Arabic script.

There is a good reason for this: the Ottomans devised a detailed transliteration system for 
the Armenian language in the Arabic script, thereby demonstrating an interest in reading 
in Armenian. This is evidenced by a companion manuscript to the Hexaglot Grammar, 
MS Ayasofya 4767 in the Süleymaniye Library (hereafter MS Ayasofya), properly dated to 
1474 (or to 923 in the Armenian Calendar). Stylistically and structurally, it matches sibling 
language-learning primers from the Ottoman palace library during this period. It also bears 
Bāyezīd II’s seal and the imperial librarian Hayrü’d-dīn Hıżır ʿAṭūfī’s (d. 1541) cataloging 
notes, and appears to have been removed from another codex.20 

MS Ayasofya opens in a neat Armenian hand, in black ink and the bolorgir script: 
թուական գրին ջիգ (“the date of this writing is 923 [=1474]”). Beneath that, written in 
red ink as an interlinear translation, in reverse order, from left to right, is another hand 
in the Persian language and script, which says the same thing. This manner of interlinear 
translation is suggestive: right from the start, this manuscript is meant to help readers of 
Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish to decipher Armenian writing (see Fig. 3).

short glossary of Armenian words, which contains many dialectal forms yet is nowhere near as comprehensive 
as the known hexaglots that present Armenian material. See Robert Dankoff, “Evliya Chelebi on the Armenian 
Language of Sivas in 1650,” Annual of Armenian Linguistics 4 (1983): 47–56; J. J. S. Weitenberg, “Evliya Chelebi on 
the Armenian Language of Sivas in 1650. Some Remarks,” Annual of Armenian Linguistics 5 (1984): 99–108. The 
later glossary of the poet Kāyālī, which follows a model of versified glossaries in multiple languages, provides 
another useful counterpoint that is more substantial than Evliyā’ Çelebi’s glossary, but, again, not nearly as 
multifaceted as the Hexaglot Grammar. See the study by Robert Dankoff, A. Turgut Kut, and J. J. S. Weitenberg, 
The Versified Armenian-Turkish Glossary by Kayali, ca. 1800 (Cleveland: Cleveland State University, 1996). 
Finally, on Armenian words that became part of the Turkish lexicon, see Robert Dankoff, Armenian Loanwords 
in Turkish (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1995). 

20.  A remark in the hand of the librarian ʿAṭūfī, just before the opening of the Armenian alphabet, reads 
“Greek grammar in Greek script.” However, this Greek grammar is missing now. In addition, the folio with the 
librarian’s note is turned upside down. This suggests that our Armenian alphabet was part of a larger codex 
before being divided and rebound at some point. Similarly, another comment at the end of the text alludes to a 
Syriac dictionary/grammar, which is also absent, though an inexperienced hand has added the Syriac and Coptic 
alphabets, in defective form, for reference on the inside cover. However, these alphabets are clearly written in a 
later hand, distinct from that used in our primer. Moreover, we know that the other alphabet sections in other 
sibling primers are always appended to grammar portions or other material. They are never single manuscripts. 
In sum, we can conclude that our Armenian script portion, which survives as a single manuscript today, was 
most likely bundled together with other material initially.



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Fig. 3. Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 4767, 1r. Photo courtesy of the 
Süleymaniye Library.



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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

Fig. 4. Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 4767, 1v–2r. Photo courtesy of the 
Süleymaniye Library.

This dating is followed by a table of the Armenian alphabet, all in minuscule, with 
the names of each letter written in the Arabic script, in red ink, below. These are not 
just the sounds that the letters make, but their proper names in the modern Western 
Armenian pronunciation: ayp, pen, kim, etc. In the remaining twenty-seven folios, we 
then encounter a series of one, two, three, and four letter syllables in the Armenian script; 
beneath each is the corresponding combination of letters in the Arabo-Persian script (see 
Fig. 4). Over three thousand combinations of letters are tried; one gets the sense of being 
in the presence of a transliteration stress-test, or at least some very serious modeling 
for readers. The system is largely consistent, and also corresponds to the Perso-Arabic 
transliterations of Middle Armenian words in the Hexaglot Grammar. It also closely 
parallels the Middle Armenian pronunciation of these sounds, with the exception of the 
Persian letter چ (phonetically “ch”) being used to stand for the letters ձ (phonetically in 
Middle Armenian “ts”), ծ (“dz”), ց (“ts‘”), again corresponding to the Hexaglot Grammar.21   

21.  In other words, this transliteration system operates according to its own internal logic but is not entirely 
“airtight” by modern standards. Additional duplicate letters include ق, which is used to render the Armenian 
կ (“g” in Middle Armenian phonetic pronunciation), գ (“k” in Middle Armenian), and ք (“k‘”). However, other 



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 Learning Middle Armenian at the Court of Meḥmed II  •  263

   
letters can also be used to render some of these sounds, such as ك for ք and գ; the letter ز also occasionally 
renders ծ (“dz”), ձ (“ts”), and ց (“ts‘”). This is one reason why a comparison with the Rasulid Hexaglot is useful, 
as despite these duplicate sounds, the Hexaglot Grammar still comes much closer to capturing the phonetic 
values of Armenian words, and moreover does so with a full complement of vowels, than does its counterpart in 
Yemen. Once one is aware of these guidelines, the experience of reading the different transliterated Armenian 
words in the Hexaglot Grammar’s Perso-Arabic script is often fairly straightforward.

Fig. 5. Numbers. 
Istanbul, 

Süleymaniye 
Library, 

MS Ayasofya 
4767, 28r. Photo 
courtesy of the 

Süleymaniye 
Library.



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MS Ayasofya concludes with a short text in Armenian: լման եղաւ (“it is completed”), 
followed by the corresponding text in Persian: تمــام �ــْد. Finally, to leave no stone unturned, 
the manuscript concludes with yet another table of the Armenian alphabet in the minuscule. 
This time, beneath each Armenian letter we find the corresponding value in Arabic numerals, 
as in the Armenian tradition letters also served as numbers. This table ends with a final 
Armenian symbol, ա. with a line drawn over it, with corresponding text in Ottoman Turkish 
that reads: “ten thousand.” This final table would have come in handy, say, for the copyist 
who translated the Armenian date, which is expressed in letters, into Arabic numerals and 
the Persian language at the start of the text (see Fig. 5).

Most importantly, the two tables of the Armenian alphabet in MS Ayasofya indicate that 
the Ottoman interest in Middle Armenian went beyond a simple desire to speak the language 
or to translate it verbally on the spot. These are tables meant to serve in fostering alphabetic 
knowledge; they exist to guide the reader in unlocking the phonemes and morphemes of 
texts. Hence, as both the Hexaglot Grammar and MS Ayasofya indicate, the Ottoman court 
prepared materials that would train students in reading the Armenian language in the 
Armenian script (at least in minuscule, as far as we know) and potentially even in writing in 
the Armenian script. Moreover, the preparers of these language primers also envisioned (and 
practiced) the corollary of this activity: reading and writing Armenian in the Perso-Arabic 
script. Finally, they deployed this pedagogical system consistently, as the transliteration of 
Armenian words and sounds across both these manuscripts indicates.

Much has rightly been made in recent years of the phenomenon of Armeno-Turkish, 
or Turkish language texts that were written in the Armenian script, a mode of writing 
that flourished for many centuries during the Ottoman Empire and was employed for 
the most part by Turkish-speaking Armenians.22 Ironically, at the empire’s beginnings, 
we find the long-neglected inversion of this practice: Turkish-speaking Ottomans, at 
court, writing Armenian in the Perso-Arabic script. Clearly, the people who produced 
and used such texts had alphabets, and mixed-script writing, on their minds, just as 
they themselves mixed among many others at court who spoke and used multiple 
language- and script-sets of their own. Indeed, as readers of these manuscripts, we can 
attest from experience that MS Ayasofya was useful in decoding the Hexaglot Grammar 
on numerous occasions. These are professionally produced works, made with great care, 
whose compilers employed their sharp scribal eyes (and ears) in attention to detail.  
    What, then, were such primers for? What kinds of texts might students have read, or 
consulted, or heard read aloud? Even more, what sorts of language students and speakers 
circulated at court, and how did they engage in related projects of knowledge production 
that likewise navigated between different alphabetic and linguistic systems? Arguably, the 
correspondences between the Hexaglot Grammar and MS Ayasofya, placed within the greater 
context of learning language at Meḥmed II’s court, index a kind of systematic thinking that 
underpinned their production: it is this manner of thinking systematically about language, 
and this mode of marshaling knowledge across diverse languages into the service of empire, 
that we excavate in our portrait of Middle Armenian at the Ottoman court. 

22.  In fact, Armeno-Turkish predates the Ottoman Empire; Rachel Goshgarian has placed its usage as early 
as 1287. See Rachel Goshgarian, “Futuwwa in Thirteenth-Century Rūm and Armenia: Reform Movements and 
the Managing of Multiple Alliances on the Seljuk Periphery,” in The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the 
Medieval Middle East, ed. A. C. S. Peacock and Sara Nur Yıldız, 227–63 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012).



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Ottoman Language Ideology in the Age of Meḥmed II

Before we can examine how and why the Ottoman court turned its attention to the 
vernacular of Middle Armenian, it is useful to understand the shifting position of Ottoman 
language ideology after Meḥmed II had taken Constantinople in 1453. Of course, the 
evolution of Ottoman language ideology—both in theory and praxis—had begun long before 
the conquest of Constantinople. Still, the period following the conquest witnessed a marked 
change in how the court conceptualized itself, and, consequently, in how it used language. 

Meḥmed II and his court employed language for both ideological and pragmatic 
reasons that collectively helped to fashion a particular sensibility of the court. To give one 
illustrative example, in the 1450s an anonymous Italian artist produced the first portrait 
medal of Meḥmed II, picturing the young sultan with an inscription that reads in Latin: 
Magnus Admiratus et Soldanus Macomet Bei (Great Amir and Sultan Meḥmed Bey).23 Only 
three decades later, in 1481, the year when Meḥmed II died, the artist Constanza da Ferrara 
praised the sultan in another portrait medal as “the Emperor of Byzantium,”24 alongside 
an altogether different inscription in Latin: Sultani Mohammeth Octhomani Uguli Byzantii 
Inperatoris (Sultan Meḥmed, of House of Osman, Emperor of Byzantium).25 Around the same 
time, in his letters to the Venetian dodge, Meḥmed II reserved the title basileos (emperor) 
in Greek for himself. He confidently names his domains as his own empire (basileia), again 
in Greek.26 In parallel, he was referred to as Ḳayṣer (Caesar or Emperor) in Ottoman Turkish 
and Persian sources, and kaysr in Middle Armenian sources, among many other titles.27 In 

23.  This anonymous artist seems to be a follower of the famous artist Pisanello (d. 1455), who had designed 
the medal of the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaiologos (r. 1425–48) in 1438–9, which became an exemplar 
for many later Renaissance medals. The inscription also echoes the titulature in Sigusmondo Malatesta’s letter 
to Meḥmed II in 1461, where the sultan is addressed as “Great Amir and Sultan Meḥmed Beg.” There are other 
appearances of this usage as well. See Gülru Necipoğlu, “Visual Cosmopolitanism and Creative Translation: 
Artistic Conversations with Renaissance Italy in Mehmed II’s Constantinople,” Muqarnas 29 (2012): 1–81, at 21, 
65–66 nn. 97–8. For more information about the medal, see Caroline Campbell and Alan Chong, Bellini and the 
East (Boston: National Gallery, 2005), 70; for a different opinion which dates the medal to the 1440s, see Julian 
Raby, “Opening Gambits,” in The Sultan’s Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman, ed. Selmin Kangal, 65–95 
(Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası, 2000), 86. 

24.  The term Byzantium is used as a toponym here, referring to Constantinople. For a similar interchanging 
usage of the two terms, see Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror, trans. Charles T. Riggs (Princeton, 
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954), 16, 139, 209, 215–17, 222.

25.  This medal’s designer, Costanzo da Ferrara (d. 1524), was an Italian artist who worked at Meḥmed II’s 
court in the 1470s after the Neapolitan court of Ferdinand I of Naples (r. 1458–94). He fashioned at least two 
portrait medals of Meḥmed II with the same design, including this later one from the year of the latter’s death. 
For the life and works of Costanzo, see Maria Andaloro, “Costanzo da Ferrara: Gli anni a Costantinopoli alla corte 
di Maometto II,” Storia dell’arte 38/40 (1980): 185–212; for this particular medal, see Susan Elizabeth Spinale, 
“The Portrait Medals of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1451–81)” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2003), 320–21; 
Necipoğlu, “Visual Cosmopolitanism,” 31, 72–73 n. 139; cf. Campbell and Chong, Bellini and the East, 71–72. 

26.  Alessio Bombaci, “Nuovi firmani greci di Maometto II,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 47, no. 2 (1954): 298–319, 
at 316–18. 

27.  Not only Meḥmed II, but also his successors, were referred to as Ḳayṣer. For example, see Kemalpaşazade, 
Tevârih-i Âl-i Osman: VII. Defter, ed. Şerafettin Turan (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1957), 3, 544. The Armenian 
physician Amirdovlat‘ likewise referred to Meḥmed II as kaysr. See Amirdovlat‘ Amasiac‘i, Angitac‘ anpēt kam 



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sum, within thirty years, Meḥmed II had stepped up from a relatively minor Turkish ruler to 
an emperor of “all Asia and Greece.”28 Most importantly, he employed not one but an array 
of languages to communicate this newfound power with audiences both local and abroad.

Following a commonplace Roman ideology, the Ottomans insisted that there be one 
empire and one emperor in the world.29 As part and parcel of this universalist ideology, the 
Ottoman sultans aimed to control and patronize arts, sciences, and learning from various 
backgrounds. Especially in the time of Meḥmed II, Ottoman patronage witnessed an epoch 
of super-plurality in the linguistic, philosophical, and scientific spheres. In addition to 
conventional Arabic, Persian, and Turkic traditions, Meḥmed’s multilingual court attempted 
to place Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, and Armenian within this universalist ideology, as we 
shall see. 

The Ottoman center’s universalist ideology is not the only reason for the inclusion of 
such diversity in the courtly context. For one, the Ottomans engaged with a large range 
of trends from Timurid Herat to Renaissance Florence.30 In tune with the fashions of the 
time, Meḥmed II’s court conducted itself in a similar manner as did the Medici Palace, 
or the Byzantine court in Mystra, in its absorption of Greek philosophical and scientific 
learning.31 Moreover, as the inheritor of the Byzantine capital, Meḥmed II had assumed 

baṙaran bžškakan niwt‘oc‘, ed. K. Y. Basmaǰean (Vienna: Mekhitarist Press, 1926), 126. Similarly, an Italo-Cretean 
humanist of Greek origins and papal secretary, George of Trebizond (d. 1473), addressed Meḥmed II as “the 
most excellent, illustrious, and greatest Emperor of the Romans (imperatorem Romanorum) who obtained the 
seat of Constantine by virtue of his conquest and the divinely granted victory.” See Angelo Mercati, “Le due 
lettere di Giorgio da Trebisonda a Maometto II,” Orientalia christiana periodica 9 (1943): 65–99, at 92. Meḥmed’s 
ambassador to the Timurid court of Husayn Bayqara (r. 1469–1506) also remarked that his master sat on the 
golden throne of Caesars. See Halil İnalcık, İki Karanın Sultanı İki Denizin Hakanı Kâyser-i Rûm Fâtih Sultan 
Mehemmed Han (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası, 2019), 756. 

28.  Necipoğlu, “Visual Cosmopolitanism,” 31. 
29.  A popular version of this position, adding one God to the formula, can be traced back to the time of 

Constantine, who relocated the capital to Byzantium in the fourth century CE. The divisio imperii became a 
major issue later in the middle and late Byzantine periods, notably following the emergence of the Holy Roman 
Empire in the West. Byzantine emperors chose not to call the Holy Roman rulers emperor. They also disliked 
being addressed as the emperor of Greece or emperor of the East by westerners. The Ottomans continued this 
policy in the sixteenth century as well. Similarly, in Ottoman documents, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was 
referred to as King of Spain rather than emperor. For an overview of the Byzantine case, see Donald M. Nicol, 
“The Byzantine View of Western Europe,” Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 8, no. 4 (1967): 12–30; for the 
Ottoman-Habsburg clash on the claims of universal empire in the sixteenth century, see Kaya Şahin, Empire 
and Power in the Reign of Süleyman: Narrating the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman World (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 2013).

30.  For example, Meḥmed II’s court imported much from its Timurid counterparts, especially in book arts 
and music. For an overview of the book arts, see Lale Uluç, “The Common Timurid Heritage of the Three Capitals 
of Islamic Arts,” in Istanbul, Isfahan, Delhi: 3 Capitals of Islamic Art: Masterpieces from the Louvre Collection, 
ed. Carol LaMotte, 39–53 (Istanbul: Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi, 2008); cf. Necipoğlu, “Visual Cosmopolitanism,” 35–45; 
On music, see Hans de Zeeuw, The Ottoman Tanbûr: The Long-Necked Lute of Ottoman Art Music (Oxford: 
Archaeopress, 2022), 8–11.

31.  It is possible to see the fusion of widespread Mediterranean artistic forms in Meḥmed’s architectural 
patronage. For instance, the Italian merchant and author Giovanni Maria Angiolello, who worked at the Ottoman 
court in various capacities after being captured in Negroponte in 1470, notes that Meḥmed II had pavilions in 



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control of one of the most important centers of the Christian church in the east. He not only 
recognized the Greek patriarch as the leader of orthodox communities, but also reportedly 
established an Armenian patriarchate in Constantinople, though in a far different form than 
the institution acquired in later periods, when it eventually served as the administrative 
head of all Armenians under Ottoman dominion.32 These and other developments piqued 
the Ottoman court’s interest in both the knowledge production of such communities and 
their languages.

Such interest manifested itself in the presence of many different peoples at the Ottoman 
court. Meḥmed II depended on ḳuls (slave-servants) of devşirme (forced conversion) 
background in almost all ranks of his high bureaucracy, in order to counterbalance the 
power of earlier Turkic aristocratic families, especially the Çandarlı. As a result, for most 
of his reign’s first two decades, he kept his mighty grand vizier Maḥmūd Pasha (d. 1474) in 
power, who was of elite Greco-Serbian origin. Meḥmed II also had various Greek secretaries. 
Two Palaiologan princes, Hāṣ Murād Pasha (d. 1473) and Mesīḥ Pasha (d. 1501), were 
recruited to the court after 1453 and later became viziers; the latter served as the grand 
vizier during the reign of Meḥmed II’s successor Bāyezīd II (r. 1481–1512).33 So too did 
many Italians serve at the court in various capacities, as did Greeks, Jews, and at least one 
Armenian physician, as we shall discuss. Meḥmed II’s court philosopher George Amiroutzes 
(d. ca. 1480), whom we shall revisit shortly, was a Greek from Trebizond. Moreover, 
some of these bureaucrats and courtiers did not convert to Islam, but participated as 
Christians or as Jews in courtly life. Self-evidently, the court was a polyglot space, yet it 
also was a multiethnic and multi-religious space, albeit one of hierarchical stratification.  
      Meḥmed II chose to express his imperial ideology by embracing the premier cosmopolitan 
and vernacular languages of his time. In terms of philosophy and the sciences, Arabic 
occupied a principal position as the scholarly lingua franca of the Islamicate world. Greek was 
also significant in this regard; knowledge of Greek and Arabic enabled one to read most of the 

diverse manners (diversi modi) built in his new palace in Constantinople. One was in Perso-Karaman style, 
another in Turkish, and a third in Greek style. The Ottoman chronicler Tursun Bey, who wrote a history of 
Meḥmed’s age roughly ten years after Meḥmed’s death, mentions two of these pavilions in Persian and Ottoman 
styles. He also adds that the towers surrounding the space where these pavilions stood were constructed in 
the European style. Today only the Persian pavilion, the Çinili Köşk, is extant. See Giovanni Maria Angiolello, 
Viaggio di Negroponte, ed. Cristina Bazzolo (Vincenza: N. Pozza, 1982), 32; Tursun Bey, Târîh-i Ebüʾl-Feth, ed. 
Mertol Tulum (Istanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1977), 73–74; these two passages and their larger context are discussed 
in Necipoğlu, “Visual Cosmopolitanism,” 26–31.

32.  On the establishment of the Armenian Patriarchate in Constantinople, see especially the classic article 
by Kevork B. Bardakjian, “The Rise of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople,” in Christians and Jews in 
the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, Volume 1: The Central Lands, ed. Benjamin Braude and 
Bernard Lewis, 89–100 (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, Inc., 1982).

33.  On Mesīḥ and Hāṣ Murād, see Theodore Spandounes, On the Origin of the Ottoman Emperors, trans. 
Donald M. Nicol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 46; Franz Babinger, “Eine Verfügung des 
Paläologen Chass Murad-Pasa von Mitte Regeb 876 = Dez./Jan. 1471–72,” in Documenta islamica inedita, ed. 
Johann Fück, 197–210 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1952). On the Ottoman administration’s gradual shift from 
the old aristocracy to ḳuls in favor of a patrimonial centralizing state, see Halil İnalcık, Fatih Devri Üzerinde 
Tetkikler ve Vesikalar (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1954), 103–36; Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The 
Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 138–50.



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scholarly literature from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Islamicate world in the fifteenth 
century. Persian was reserved more for belletrist purposes, but there were a considerable 
number of Persian books at the court library as well. It is no surprise that Meḥmed II 
commissioned his acts and deeds written in these languages: in Greek by Kritovoulos (d. 
ca. 1470), in Persian by Maʾālī (d. after 1474), and in Arabic by Ḳaramanī Meḥmed Pasha (d. 
1481).34 Perhaps tellingly, there is no sign of a Turkish chronicle commissioned by Meḥmed II. 
In contrast to his father’s reign, during which the Ottoman court commissioned or presented 
various translations from Arabic and Persian into Turkish, Meḥmed II’s reign represented 
a reversal in this trend of Turkish language cultivation through courtly patronage.  
    Anatolian Turkish, in its written form, was still relatively young at this point, and its 
future was somewhat undecided. It had only been admitted to writing circa 1300, roughly a 
century after Middle Armenian’s initial period of flourishing.35 Initially, the Ottoman court 
used Turkish in its administration, but only alongside many other languages. For example, 
the majority of letters that the Ottomans sent to Western powers were composed in Greek 
during the empire’s first two centuries.36 The state also corresponded with various parties in 
Arabic and Persian. Still, in the literary sphere, the early Ottomans patronized various poets 
who composed in Turkish, such as Aḥmedī (d. ca. 1413) and Aḥmed-i Dāʿī (d. after 1421); 
in the following decades, Murād II’s (r. 1421–31) court likewise commissioned or received 
numerous translations from Arabic and Persian into Turkish. Meḥmed II’s reign, on the 
other hand, presents an inversion in this trajectory. Relatively speaking, his court seems 
to have lost its enthusiasm for Turkish literature and translations into Turkish in favor of 
the more recognizably cosmopolitan languages of the Mediterranean world, such as Arabic, 
Persian, and Greek.37 To provide one suggestive example, when Meḥmed II conquered 

34.  Kritovoulos’s History only survives in a single manuscript. See Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, 
MS GI. 3. For an English translation of the work, see Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed. As far as we know, the 
Khunkārnāma (Book of the Sovereign) by Ma’ālī remains unpublished; see Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum 
Library, MS H. 1417. Finally, although Ḳaramanī Meḥmed Pasha’s history is a history of the House of Osman, its 
second half narrates the deeds of Meḥmed II. See Himmet Taşkömür and Hüseyin Yılmaz, “Nişancı Mehmed Paşa 
and His History of the Ottoman House,” in Crafting History: Essays on the Ottoman World and Beyond in Honor 
of Cemal Kafadar, ed. Rachel Goshgarian, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi and Ali Yaycioğlu (Boston: Academic Studies 
Press, 2023), 58–76.

35.  The development of the written Anatolian Turkish vernacular in the fourteenth century coincided with 
a time of political fragmentation in Anatolia and therefore has no direct correlation with a single, centralized 
court. For an overview, see Gottfried Hagen, “Towards a Social Pre-History of the Ottoman Turkish Language,” 
Turcica 54 (2023): 245–85; György Hazai, “La Place Du XIVe Siècle Dans l’évolution de La Langue Turque,” in The 
Ottoman Emirate (1300–1389): Halcyon Days in Crete 1: A Symposium Held in Rethymnon 11–13 January 1991, 
ed. Elizabeth Zachariadou, 61–66 (Rethymnon: Crete University Press, 1993); A. C. S. Peacock, Islam, Literature 
and Society in Mongol Anatolia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 147–87. 

36.  The earliest surviving Greek document by the Ottoman chancellery is from the reign of Bāyezīd I (r. 
1389–1402). See Stephane Binon, Les Origines Legendaires et l’Histoire de Xeropotamou et de Saint-Paul de 
l’Athos (Louvain: Bureaux de Museon, 1942), 274–75. We also have various other extant documents, diplomas, 
and letters in Greek composed by the Ottoman chancellery in later periods up until the first half of the sixteenth 
century. For an anthology of some of these Greek documents, see Franz Miklosich and Joseph Müller, eds., Acta 
et diplomata graeca medii aevi sacra et profana (Vindobonae: C. Gerold, 1860), 3:282–367.

37.  Of course, the Ottoman court did not entirely neglect Turkish. Still, its focus was on the other cosmopolitan 



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Constantinople and entered the Hagia Sophia for the first time, he was reportedly moved 
to recite a line of poetry—but, tellingly, not a line of Anatolian Turkish poetry. Instead, he 
recited a couplet of Persian verse, demonstrating his literary bona fides within a broader 
Persianate context even at the height of Ottoman martial dominance.38

It would not be until the sixteenth century that the Ottoman elite fashioned an ornately 
literary register of Ottoman Turkish, which would become the primary language of the 
court. This new register of literary Turkish represented a revolutionary departure from 
earlier forms of Turkish in Anatolia, especially in terms of style and vocabulary. The 
emergence of this new register was, to a large degree, a conscious act of the Ottoman 
elite in Constantinople and some other major urban centers, which resulted in a major 
epistemological distinction between the rulers and the ruled. Of course, Anatolian Turkish 
did not disappear; instead it continued to be used and to evolve in other literary registers. 
However, the new elites of Rūm, a ruling minority of an empire established on the former 
lands of the Eastern Romans, wished to distinguish themselves from what they perceived 
as their own modest past. Therefore, they would no longer use the language of the earlier 
figures like Aḥmedī, let alone the spoken forms of old Anatolian Turkish.39 

Only after the cultivation of a courtly register of Ottoman Turkish did the empire begin 
to conduct its affairs largely in Turkish. Even in correspondence with foreign powers, the 
Ottoman chancellery mostly used Ottoman Turkish, shedding a good deal of its multilingual 
bureaucratic skin.40 Ottoman literary production likewise tracked this development; the 
new literati disregarded the Turkish literature of the previous two centuries, save for a 
few major works and writers. A fresh kind of Turkish literature, only intelligible to the 

languages of the Mediterranean. For example, a recent exhibition catalog of the manuscripts that were copied 
for Meḥmed’s perusal, though not a complete list of extant manuscripts, lists 203 manuscripts. Among them, 
only one is in Turkish: a calendar copied in 1452. See Nil Baydar, ed., Sultan Fatih’in Şahsi Kitaplığı: Yazma Eser 
Sergisi (Istanbul: Yazma Eserler Kurumu, 2023), 414–38. More strikingly, Turkish-language poets seem to have 
taken note of the state’s interest in non-Turkic languages. Thus, in one quatrain from the period we hear of the 
frustration of local, Turkish language poets over Meḥmed II’s literary preferences: “Ger dilersen şāh eşiginde 
olasın muḥterem / Yā yehūd ol gel bu mülke yā frenk ol yā ‘acem / Adıñı ḳo, Ḳabīlī vü Hābīlī vü Ḥāmidī / 
Zorzi’likden ġāfil olma, ma‘rifetten urma dem” (“If you wish to be favored on the shah’s (Meḥmed II’s) threshold 
/ You must come to this land as a Jew, or a European, or a Persian / Your pen name must be Ḳabīlī, or Hābīlī, or 
Ḥāmidī (i.e., the names of some actual court poets in Meḥmed’s palace) / And don’t forget to act like a Zorzi (a 
Venetian name), [in such cases,] you don’t have to demonstrate any knowledge”). See Süheyl Ünver, İstanbul 
Üniversitesi Tarihine Başlangıç: Fatih, Külliyesi ve Zamanı İlim Hayatı (Istanbul: Istanbul University, 1946), 248.

38.  Tursun Bey, Târîh-i Ebü’l-feth, 64.
39.  For a survey of the transformation of Turkish literature in this period, see Selim Kuru, “The Literature of 

Rum: The Making of a Literary Tradition (1450–1600),” in Cambridge History of Turkey, ed. Suraiya N. Faroqhi 
and Kate Fleet, 2:548–92 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

40.  For example, Süleyman I (r. 1520–66) sent his famous letter to Francis I (r. 1515–45) in this ornate register 
of Ottoman Turkish in 1526. See A. Berthier, “Magnifiques retrouvailles: la lettre de Soliman à François Ier,” 
Revue de la Bibliothèque nationale de France 3 (1994), 61–62. Previous Ottoman rulers generally preferred 
to write such letters in Greek, or occasionally in another European language. For one such Greek letter from 
Bāyezīd II to Lorenzo de Medici, see Franz Babinger, Spätmittelalterliche fränkische Briefschaften aus dem 
Grossherrlichen Seraj zu Stambul (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1963), plate 13.



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literati, was ascendant.41 It is no wonder that Muṣṭafā ʿĀlī of Gallipoli (d. 1600), a bureaucrat 
and one of the most famous litterateurs of the late sixteenth century, argued that “in 
the view of those eloquent in Turkish, the use of simple Turkish should be forbidden.”42 
This ornate register of Turkish—the imperial Ottoman Turkish which was in many ways 
a product of the sixteenth century—had become victorious among the Ottoman elites, 
gradually eclipsing various vernacular languages (such as Italian and Byzantine Greek) 
and cosmopolitan languages (such as Latin and Classical Greek) at court, but only 
after more than a century had passed since Meḥmed II’s conquest of Constantinople. 
    It is important to remember that the language ideology of Meḥmed II’s court was 
altogether different. Rather than attempting to elevate a form of “vernacular” Turkish into 
a primary instrument of the state, as did the court of Armenian Cilicia with Cilician Middle 
Armenian, it aimed to employ the established cosmopolitan and vernacular Mediterranean 
languages according to its different needs, audiences, and hierarchies of value. Classical 
and Middle Armenian arguably sat on different rungs of this hierarchy, as we will show, 
and early Ottoman Turkish sat on yet another. Many other languages joined these tongues, 
including Arabic and Persian at the top, and also Italian, Latin, Byzantine and Classical 
Greek, Hebrew, Serbian, and Syriac on various rungs below.

Greek, however, was by and large the most prestigious “non-Islamic” language in the 
eyes of the court. It is especially worth examining the role of Greek language learning at 
the court of Meḥmed II in detail here, in part because it helps us to better understand the 
court’s interest in the so-called “non-Islamic” (gayrı İslami) languages, an emic designation 
used by the Topkapı Palace Museum Library, and in part because Greek has a much larger 
footprint in the palace library than do the other languages that fall into this category.43 
Moreover, as we shall demonstrate in the following section, the presence of elite Greek-
speaking figures at court, such as the philosopher George Amiroutzes (d. ca. 1480), helps 
to provide a framework through which we can better understand the relationship between 

41.  Even the so-called shopkeeper poets of sixteenth-century Istanbul were part of this state-centered elite; 
it is not possible to see them as a distinct bourgeois class. See Selim Kuru, “Gazel as Genre Among the Ottoman 
Ruling Elite,” in Routledge Handbook on Turkish Literature-Routledge, ed. Didem Havlioğlu and Zeynep Uysal, 
70–81 (New York: Routledge 2023).

42.  In the introductory discourse of his general history, ʿĀlī notes, “In fact, the astonishing language current 
in the state of Rum, composed of four languages [West Turkish, Chagatai, Arabic, and Persian], is a pure gilded 
tongue which, in the speech of the literati, seems more difficult than any of these. If one were to equate speaking 
Arabic with a religious obligation (farz), and the use of Persian with a sanctioned tradition (sünnet), then the 
speaking of a Turkish made up of these sweetnesses (Arabic and Persian) becomes a meritorious act (müstehabb), 
and, in the view of those eloquent in Turkish, the use of simple Turkish should be forbidden.” What he means 
by “eloquent Turkish” is the ornate and literary register, while he refers to the simple forms of Old Anatolian 
Turkish as “simple Turkish.” See Gelibolulu Mustafa Ali, Künhü’l-Ahbar, ed. Suat Donuk (Istanbul: Yazma Eserler 
Kurumu, 2020), 1:62–63. For the English translation and a discussion of the context of this passage, see Cornell 
H. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali (Princeton, NJ: 
Princeton University Press, 1986), 253–57; for a different interpretation of this passage, see Hagen, “Towards a 
Social Pre-History,” 245–46, 254–54 n. 29. 

43.  Similarly, the preface of one primer even distinguishes languages that use or do not use the Arabic 
script. See Berlin, Staatsbibliothek MS or. oct. 33, 5r. For an edition and translation of this preface, see Budak, 
“Teaching Greek.”



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elite Armenian figures and Meḥmed II during the same time period—especially the courtly 
presence of another “Amir,” the celebrated physician Amirdovlat‘ of Amasya, who employed 
Middle Armenian in his massive corpus of medical dictionaries and pharmacopeia. 

Instruction in Greek at the Ottoman court in the second half of the fifteenth century, as 
suggested in part by the corpus of language primers in Greek produced during this period, 
had at least three objectives: first, to train scribes and secretaries for the chancellery; 
second, to prepare Greek-speaking interpreters; and third, to recover and promulgate 
what the Ottomans perceived as ancient knowledge. Scholars have discussed the first two 
objectives rather extensively.44 However, Ottoman interest in philosophical and scientific 
topics from the ancient Greek (and Roman) world is more often overlooked. This antiquarian 
interest in the ancient Greco-Roman world focused especially on the realms of philosophy, 
sciences, and historical writing, even while the court maintained a corresponding interest 
in contemporary Greek writings.45

Here a closer examination of the contents of the Topkapı manuscript (Ahmet III 2698) 
that contains our Hexaglot Grammar is illustrative. As mentioned, this manuscript begins 
with the Hexaglot (1v–47r). It is followed by yet another adaptation of the Dānistan 
(52v–58v), which lacks any Armenian text, and then by a section of paradigmatic tables 
for conjugation from the Arabic base word to Greek, Latin, and Persian (67v–73v). The 
remainder of the manuscript contains supplementary teaching material: one section on the 
Greek terminology relating to logic (62v–65v); another on the basics of Greek philosophy 
(74v–81v); one on the correct spelling of ancient philosophers’ names (82v–88r); and finally 
a section on Greek astrological terminology (89v–91r). Like the grammatical sections of the 
manuscript, these materials are meant to serve as introductions to their subjects. What 
they reveal, however, is that subjects concerning “the ancients” were intended to be taught 
alongside elementary language instruction in multiple languages, with primacy given to 
Greek.

One of the Hexaglot Grammar’s sister codices, which similarly was based on the Persian-
Ottoman Turkish dictionary and grammar known as the Dānistan, helps to make this 
plain. Presently housed in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin with the shelf mark MS or. oct. 33 
(hereafter MS Berlin), this manual was perhaps produced in the mid-1460s, while its binding 
dates most likely to the end of the 1470s. Its linguistic contents are somewhat different, 
however: this Dānistan is a grammar and dictionary of Greek, Latin, and medieval Serbian, 
with two long reading assignments in Greek, entitled “The Opinions of Philosophers” and 
“The Story of the [Lydian] King Croesus and the Sage Solon [of Athens].” These pieces, and 
particularly the second one, are rich in historical and philosophical detail, suggesting that 

44.  For example, see Julian Raby, “Mehmed the Conqueror’s Greek Scriptorium,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 37 
(1983): 15–34; Speros Vryonis, “Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Istanbul: Evolution in a Millenial Imperial 
Iconography,” in The Ottoman City and Its Parts: Urban Structure and Social Order, ed. Irene A. Bierman, Rifa’at 
A. Abou-El-Haj, and Donald Preziosi, 13–52 (New Rochelle, NY: A. D. Caratzas, 1991), 39–40.

45.  In particular, the evidence we have suggests that the Ottoman court saw the Greek written tradition, 
philosophy, and science (both ancient and contemporary) as quite compatible with similar fields in the Islamicate 
world. However, within this general context, the court still displayed a remarkable interest in the antiquity of 
the Greek tradition. This fashion was also informed and inspired by similar currents in Italy, as mentioned.



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their contents were as important to students as their linguistic makeup. Such readings 
again demonstrate that students were simultaneously taught ancient subjects, primarily 
philosophy, at the outset of a multilingual language education. Moreover, this sibling 
manuscript contains an Arabic preface that informs students that Meḥmed II has assembled 
a collection of books at the palace library in many languages. The statement is suggestive, 
as though directing students to continue their education elsewhere in the multilingual 
palace library. Today, the surviving portions of the palace’s multilingual library from this 
period demonstrate a significant interest in ancient philosophy, science, medicine, history, 
and even mythology.

It is impossible to look at this antiquarian revival, however, without considering its 
intimate ties to state power. Chiefly, in its pursuit of such knowledge, Ottoman courtly 
culture presented Meḥmed II as a philosopher king in command of many languages, a topos 
that was commonplace at premodern courts in this region, including at the Renaissance 
courts of the Mediterranean and the Hungarian court of Mathias Corvinus in Buda.46 
Numerous accounts bolster this depiction of Meḥmed II as a polyglot “educated king.”47 
One of the earliest was written shortly after the conquests of Constantinople by a Greco-
Venetian diplomat and humanist named Nikolaos Sekoundinos (d. 1464). In describing 
Meḥmed II, he draws attention to the particular sort of materials (and instructors) that 
commanded the sultan’s interest: 

While continuously engaged in administration and many great things, as I remarked, 
he (Meḥmed II) endeavors to devote himself to literature and philosophy. He has a 
man who is learned in philosophy in the Arabic language; who is allowed to approach 
the ruler; and who has the right to read him every day at a certain time something 
worthy of hearing. He (Meḥmed II) also has two physicians: one learned in Latin, the 
other in Greek. They are very close servants of the ruler (familiarissime).48 Under their 
guidance, he wanted to learn about ancient history. He was not only interested in the 
events of the Lacedaemonians (Spartans), Athenians, Romans, Carthaginians, and the 
other kings and rulers, but he also chose to imitate, above all, Alexander of Macedon 
and Gaius Caesar, whose exploits (quorum res gestas) he had ordered to be translated 
into his own language. He takes great delight in reading and listening to those.49

46.  For example, Marsilio Ficino (d. 1499), the most influential philosopher under Medici patronage, similarly 
fashioned an image of Mathias as philosopher king. See Valery Rees, “Ficino’s Advice to Princes,” in Marsilio 
Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. Michael J. B. Allen and Valery Rees, with Martin Davies 
(Leiden: Brill, 2002), 339–57.

47.  Ottoman propaganda that depicted Meḥmed II as a philosopher king had a long reach. To give one 
example, George of Trebizond wrote directly to Meḥmed II in a manner that reproduced the sultan’s own 
self-image: “Your nature exceeds that of all other kings by so great a degree that you are able to unite with 
extraordinary perfection the two extreme opposite goods of human nature, I mean the loftiness of kingship 
and the profundity of philosophy, bringing together as one military leadership and scientific learning.” See 
John Monfasani, ed., Collectanea Trapezuntiana: Texts, Documents, and Bibliographies of George of Trebizond 
(Binghamton, NY: the Renaissance Society of America, 1984), 281–82.

48.  This phrase implies that these physicians were the sultan’s intimate companions in the inner court and 
privy chamber; they were familia regis.

49.  Agostino Pertusi, La Caduta di Costantinopoli: Volume 1. Le testimonianze dei contemporanei: Volume 2. 



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Meḥmed II’s desire to emulate Alexander the Great (336–323 BCE) or Julius Caesar (d. 44 
BCE), reported in these accounts, was also part of his imperial propaganda that furnished the 
sultan with a genealogy of other philosopher kings. These correlations became somewhat 
commonplace at the Ottoman court. For example, the author of the Historia Turchesca 
similarly notes that after the conquest of Constantinople Meḥmed II began to see himself as 
a reincarnation of Caesar.50 

Another report, attributed to Giacomo Languschi (d. 1453) and included in Zorzi Dolfin’s 
(d. ca. 1458) Cronaca, offers a complementary image of the sultan, likewise weaving his 
performative multilingualism into expressions of state power: 

He (Meḥmed II) aspires to match Alexander of Macedon’s glory. Continuously, histories 
of Rome and others are read to him by a companion of Cyriac of Ancona and another 
Italian. He has them read Laertius, Herodotus, Livy, Quintus Curtius, chronicles of 
Popes, emperors, kings of France, and the Lombards. He uses three languages: Turkish, 
Greek, and Slav.51

As these and other reports suggest, in addition to speaking Turkish, Meḥmed II reportedly 
knew Arabic and Greek. He could certainly read Persian, though his knowledge of Slavic 
languages remains uncertain.52 Regardless of his actual command over those languages, it 
is clear that his court at large was invested in bolstering its multilingual credentials, which, 
crucially, were tied to its own self-expression of authority. Still, these reports are full of 

L’eco del mondo (Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1976), 2:130–32.
50.  Historia Turchesca was written by either Angilolleo, an Italian servant at the Ottoman court, or by 

Donado da Lezze who could have used Angiolello’s memoirs to complete the book. For the relevant passage, see 
Donado da Lezze, Historia Turchesca, ed. Ion Ursu (Bucharest: Academia Română, 1909), 21–22.

51.  Here we have emendated the Italian text in the printed version, which reads “a companion called Cyriac.” 
By consulting its manuscripts, Julian Raby has demonstrated that the original Italian text said “a companion 
of Cyriac.” See Raby, “Cyriacus of Ancona and the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II,” Journal of the Warburg and 
Courtauld Institutes 43 (1980): 242–46. For the original Italian text, though still with this error, see Agostino 
Pertusi, Testi inediti e poco noti sulla caduta di Costantinopoli, ed. Antonio Carile (Bologna: Pàtron, 1983), 
172–73. For a critique of the attribution of this account to Languschi, see Martin C. Davies, “An Enigma and a 
Phantom: Giovanni Aretino and Giacomo Languschi,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 37 (1988): 1–29. cf. the English 
translation in J. R. Melville Jones, The Siege of Constantinople 1453: Seven Contemporary Accounts (Amsterdam: 
Hakkert, 1972), 126.

52.  It is possible that Meḥmed knew some spoken medieval Serbian, in part because there were many Slavic-
speaking servants and concubines at the court. For instance, George of Hungary (d. 1502) claims, with some 
hyperbole, that Slavic, and not Turkish, was largely spoken at the Ottoman court in Edirne in the mid-fifteenth 
century. See George of Hungary, Tractatus de moribus, condictionibus et nequicia Turcorum. Traktat über die 
Sitten, die Lebensverhältnisse und die Arglist der Türken, ed. Reinhard Klockow (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1993), 
210. Of course, there has been disagreement about Meḥmed II’s knowledge of Greek in historiography. As one 
among many pieces of evidence, we will mention here the famous humanist George of Trebizond’s report to 
Pope Paul II. George notes that Meḥmed “understands Greek well, Latin not at all (Grece bene intelligit, Latinam 
minime).” See John Monfasani, George of Trebizond: A Biography and a Study of His Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden: 
Brill, 1976), 357; also cited in Julian Raby, “Mehmed the Conqueror’s Greek Scriptorium,” n. 32; and Diether R. 
Reinsch, “Greek Manuscripts in the Sultan’s Library,” in Bibliothèques grecques dans l’Empire ottoman, ed. 
André Binggeli, Matthieu Cassin, and Marina Detoraki (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), 112.



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revealing details: we learn that Meḥmed’s physicians, who were generally versed not only in 
medicine but also in philosophy and history, read ancient Greek and Latin literature aloud 
to him. We also learn that one of these physicians was a companion of Cyriac of Ancona, 
who was commonly accepted as the father of antiquarianism and archeology. Cyriac was 
on excellent terms with the Ottoman court, and he had met Meḥmed II when he was a 
child in Adrianople.53 Cyriac of Ancona’s companion, mentioned in the previous passage, 
has been convincingly identified as Iacopo/Jacopo da Gaeta, a Jewish physician from Italy, 
who appears as Yaʿḳūb Pasha in Ottoman sources following his conversion to Islam. He was 
Meḥmed II’s personal physician and confidant until the former’s death.54

As the presence of erudite figures such as Yaʿḳūb Pasha suggests, not all of these 
purported connections to the Hellenic or Roman worlds were performative. Records of 
Ottoman patronage indicate that the court engaged in substantial study of Greek and 
other “non-Islamic” languages, in addition to the bodies of philosophical, theological, 
and scientific knowledge that circulated in those languages. Meḥmed II’s institutional 
interest in Greek learning is demonstrated in part by this collection of Greek manuscripts 
and the establishment of a Greek scriptorium.55 Today, some seventy Greek manuscripts, 
now housed in libraries around the world, can be associated with his royal collection with 
certainty; the original collection was likely more extensive.56 

In addition to polyglot physicians, trained philosophers also joined Meḥmed II’s 
court, further bolstering the activities of its Greek library and scriptorium. Most notably, 
following the conquest of Trebizond in 1461, Meḥmed II took captive a Greek philosopher 
named George Amiroutzes.57 Contemporaries usually refer to Amiroutzes simply as “the 
philosopher,” following the example of Aristotle, who enjoyed the same unadorned epithet. 

53.  Cyriac of Ancona, Later Travels, ed. and trans. Edward W. Bodnar with Clive Foss (Cambridge, MA: 
Harvard University Press, 2003), 34–35.

54.  For Jacopo da Gaeta, see Franz Babinger, “Ja’qub Pascha, Ein Leibarzt Mehmed’s II: Leben und Schicksale 
des Maestro Jacopo aus Gaeta,” Rivista Degli Studi Orientali 26 (1951): 87–113; on the identification of the 
companion in this passage, also see Pertusi, La Caduata di Costantinopoli, 2:447 n. 5; Raby, “Cyriacus of Ancona,” 
245.

55.  Raby, “Mehmed the Conqueror’s Greek Scriptorium.” For an overview of translations from Greek at the 
court, see Maria Mavroudi, “Translations from Greek into Arabic at the Court of Mehmed the Conqueror,” in 
The Byzantine Court: Source of Power and Culture, ed. Ayla Ödekan and Nevra Necipoğlu, 196–205 (Istanbul: Koç 
University Press, 2013).

56.  The most up-to-date account of Meḥmed’s Greek manuscripts is Reinsch, “Greek Manuscripts.”
57.  For Amiroutzes’ writings, see George Amiroutzes, The Philosopher, or On Faith, ed. John Monfasani 

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021); George Amiroutzes, George Amiroutzes: The Philosopher 
and His Tractates, ed. John Monfasani (Leuven: Peeters, 2011); Bart Janssens and Peter Van Deun, “George 
Amiroutzes and His Poetical Oeuvre,” in Philomathestatos: Studies in Greek and Byzantine Texts Presented to 
Jacques Noret for His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Bart Janssens, 297–324 (Leuven: Peeters, 2004). On Amiroutzes’ 
activities, biography, and times, see also Nikolaos Tomadakis, “Ἐτούρκευσεν ὁ Γεώργιος Ἀμιρούτζης,” Επετηρίς 
/ Επετηρίδα Εταιρείας Βυζαντινών Σπουδών 18 (1948): 99–143; Nicora Beldiceanu and Irène Beldiceanu-
Steinherr, “Biens des Amiroutzes d’après un registre ottoman de 1487,” Travaux et Mémoires 8 (1981): 63–78; 
Astérios Argyriou and Georges Lagarrigue, “Georges Amiroutzès et son ‘Dialogue sur la foi au christ tenu avec 
le Sultan des turcs’,” Byzantinische Forschungen 11 (1987): 29–222; Vladimir Mirmiroğlu, Fatih Sultan Mehmet 
Han Hazretlerinin Devrine Ait Tarihi Vesikalar (İstanbul: Çituri Biraderler, 1945); 94–102.



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Just as Alexander the Great had Aristotle, Meḥmed II now had his Amiroutzes. Appropriately, 
then, Amiroutzes was a fervent Aristotelian. He recalls his first meeting with Meḥmed II in 
his Greek dialogue entitled On Faith, remarking on the sultan’s appetite for philosophy in 
particular: 

I had become, along with all the Greeks, the slave of the Despot of the Romans and Greeks 
(Meḥmed II) through his conquest of my homeland. He heard something about me; and 
because he took delight in debates and in philosophy, he engaged me in discussions. 
And having approved of me, he ordered that I be in constant attendance and follow in 
the train of the army, as he entered into conversation with me on philosophy.58

In his new patron, Amiroutzes found (or chose to depict) an idealized philosopher 
king, one as stimulated by Greek philosophy as he was by his military campaigns against 
neighboring powers. Amiroutzes himself was a Greek nobleman from Trebizond, one of 
those conquered neighbors. As a layman, he had joined the Greek delegation at the Council 
of Ferrara-Florence (1438–39) in support of the union of the churches. He later served as 
megas logothetes and protovestiarios in the Empire of Trebizond, until its conquest by 
the Ottomans in 1461, when he became a courtier and personal philosopher to Meḥmed II, 
positions he retained until his death around the year 1480.

Amiroutzes and his family were instrumental in building the Greek manuscript 
collection at the palace library. His two sons, Basil and Alexander, both followed in their 
father’s footsteps and likewise became officials of the court. Likely during Bāyezīd II’s 
reign, these sons converted to Islam as Meḥmed and İskender; the latter’s sobriquet in 
Turkish was “son of the philosopher (feylesofoğlu).”59 Basil/Meḥmed was educated as a 
translator at the court, and assisted his father in translating Greek into Arabic, and at 
least one work from Arabic into Greek. This was a medical textbook titled al-Masāʾil fī 
al-ṭibb li-l-mutaʿallimīn (Questions on Medicine for Students) by Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq (d. 
873), and was most likely completed in the 1460s.60 We already know that physicians 
aided the court’s study of philosophy and history, and here we find the corollary of this 
activity: translators and (presumably) philosophers aiding in the study of medicine.  
    In fact, Ḥunayn’s Questions was one of the most extensively read medical works in 
the premodern Islamicate world. As the title suggests, it was intended as a brief guide 
to Galenic medicine for students with no previous knowledge of the subject, as well as 
to serve as a pharmacopeia, of which the Ottoman court had substantial interest.61 One 

58.  Amiroutzes, The Philosopher, 39–41.
59.  Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed, 177; Janssens and Van Deun, “George Amiroutzes,” 302 n. 23; Amiroutzes, 

The Philosopher, 6–9.
60.  This translation was first brought to our attention via a presentation by Petros Bouras-Vallianatos and 

Elvira Wakelnig at the 2nd Arabo-Greek Workshop held at the University of Mainz on June 9–10, 2023. We are 
grateful to both scholars.

61.  This translation survives in three manuscripts (two of them have the complete text, one partial) in 
Spain and England. They are Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canon. gr. 001; El Escorial, Real Biblioteca, Υ. III. 14; and 
Real Biblioteca, Υ. III. 17. At least a portion of the later Escorial manuscript was produced by the Ottoman court 
scriptorium. Moreover, this may be a holograph manuscript. For the time being, we do not have conclusive 



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manuscript (the Escorial Library, Y. III. 17) that contains Basil/Meḥmed’s translation is 
highly revealing in this regard: it opens with an alphabetical list of plant names translated 
from Turkish to Greek.62 This is followed by a Turkish-Latin-Greek dictionary of drugs and 
plant names; a Turkish-language epistle written in the Greek script; an index that contains 
the works of Aristotle; and Basil/Meḥmed’s Greek translation of Ḥunayn. Finally, it contains 
a lengthy list of Turkish plant names and pharmaceutics in the Greek script, towards its 
end. What the translation, if not the manuscript as a whole, suggests, in other words, is 
that the flow of information at the Ottoman court was not unidirectional across a fixed 
pathway of languages. Arabic, Greek, and Turkish medical and pharmacological knowledge 
mixed together (as did these languages and their scripts, if not the people who used them), 
demonstrating robust forms of intellectual exchange in the multilingual production of 
knowledge. 

Amiroutzes’s other son, Alexander/İskender, became the chief treasurer of the court 
and was likewise an active translator, albeit revealing a different aspect of the court’s 
multilingual activity. After converting to Islam, he composed a translation of Greek Bible 
verses into Arabic. Beneath these verses, he glosses his translations, again in Arabic, with 
a polemical exegesis.63 This strategy of quotation, translation, and gloss also follows the 
pedagogical program of the Ottoman court’s language-learning primers, which often 
furnished a Greek verse written in red ink in the Arabic script, then a translation, then the 
author’s own remarks in Arabic. This is perhaps suggestive that the same circles involved in 
preparing the language-learning materials also produced translations at the court, including 
both scriptural and scientific works. Both circles, after all, were composed of multilingual 
scholars who sometimes performed multiple jobs including translation, instruction, and 
composition. For our purposes, much like his brother, Alexander/İskender also draws out 
an important thread of the court’s cultivation of “non-Islamic” languages: their connection 
to Christian and Jewish theology.64 

Amiroutzes’ Greek Dialogue is perhaps the best witness to the entangled role of 
translators, physicians, and philosophers in this ongoing conversation over religion that 
played out across languages. The Dialogue is a recreation of a debate between philosopher 
and sultan that continued for many nights in the presence of other courtiers. As it unfolds, 
the Greek philosopher and Ottoman sultan discuss Christian and Islamic doctrine, as well 

data about the handwriting of Basil Amiroutzes. For the manuscripts, see Alejo Revilla and Gregorio de Andrés 
Martínez, Catálogo de Los Códices Griegos de La Biblioteca de El Escorial (Madrid: Imprenta Helénica, 1936–65), 
2:161–64, 167–69; Henry Octavius Coxe, Catalogi Codicum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae Pars Tertia: 
Codices Graecos et Latinos Canonicianos Complectens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1854), 1–4.

62.  For a detailed description of this particular manuscript and its contents, see Revilla and de Andres 
Martinez, Catálogo de Los Códices Griegos, 2:167–68. 

63.  For example, the translation begins with John 1:1. The Greek text is provided as follows: ِايــْْن اُُو  َاَاَنْْريش 
تُُوْن َثَئؤن ََكَثَيُُوْس ِايْْن اُُو لُُوغُُوسْ .See Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, MS Lala Ismail 261 .لُُوغُُوْس ََكئُُو لُُوغُُوْس ِايْْن ِِبُُرْس�ْ

64.  For more information on Alexander/İskender and on biblical translations attributed to the Amiroutzes 
family, see Immanuel Bekker, ed., Historia Politica et Patriarchica Constantinopoleos: Epirotica (Bonn: Weber, 
1849), 130–31; Spyridon P. Lampros, ed., Ecthesis Chronica & Chronicon Athenarum (London: Methuen & Co., 
1902), 36, 46–47.



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as philosophical topics such as metaphysics. At one point during their heated conversation, 
Meḥmed II interjects that perhaps Amiroutzes was fudging the record about the prophets 
of the Hebrew Bible. Fortunately, the sultan declares, he has a method of verifying whether 
Amiroutzes speaks the truth:

Perhaps this is something you are fabricating right now, and it was not really written 
down. For why is it that the Hebrews, who had the books of the prophets, do not agree 
with you? Consequently, we want to learn who are the ones who say this and where 
they say it. And mind you, do not insert anything of your own making. For we have 
Jacob here, who was once a Hebrew and who can read these books on the spot. He will 
also be able to read them to us in Arabic.65

Amiroutzes thus depicts an Ottoman court that consulted and debated biblical 
manuscripts and their translations at regular gatherings. The passage also suggests that 
Yaʿḳūb Pasha, the sultan’s Jewish physician from Italy, was capable of translating Hebrew 
into Arabic. The court library had at least eleven biblical manuscripts in Arabic and Persian; 
it would also seem, based on this passage, that the court may have possessed not only Greek 
biblical material but also the Hebrew originals, along with Arabic and Persian translations.66 

What is most striking about this passage is the collaborative (and sometimes combative) 
linguistic dynamism between different members of the court, who were able to switch 
between languages, to verify bodies of knowledge present across multiple languages, and 
even to translate rather spontaneously, it would seem, as the court negotiated its own 
religious positionality. Moreover, this sort of debate at court was hardly unique. Two 
anonymous Greek chronicles from the sixteenth century likewise report that Meḥmed II 
regularly questioned his courtiers about Christianity;67 other accounts depict the sultan 
conversing with the chief rabbi of Istanbul about Judaism.68 So, too, did he interview 
Gennadios Scholarios at his patriarchal office in the Pammakaristos Church.69 As a result of 
this visit, Meḥmed II commissioned Gennadios to compose two expositions of the Orthodox 

65.  Amiroutzes, The Philosopher, 123. 
66.  It seems that these eleven manuscripts were copies of earlier biblical translations into Arabic. However, 

a detailed analysis of all biblical manuscripts that the Ottoman court possessed in the fifteenth century remains 
a desideratum. For the eleven biblical manuscripts in ʿAṭūfī’s catalog lists, see Cemal Kafadar, “Between Amasya 
and Istanbul: Bayezid II, His Librarian, and the Textual Turn of the Late Fifteenth Century,” in Treasures of 
Knowledge: An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3–1503/4), Volume I: Essays, ed. Gülru Necipoğlu, 
Cemal Kafadar, and Cornell H. Fleischer, 79–153 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 100, 108. For a translation of the Book of 
Daniel from Syriac into Arabic, which contains marginalia in both Syriac and Hebrew and was commissioned by 
Meḥmed II, see Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, Ayasofya 3367.

67.  Bekker, ed., Historia Politica et Patriarchica, 117; Lampros, ed., Ecthesis Chronica, 36. 
68.  Charles Berlin, “A Sixteenth-Century Hebrew Chronicle of the Ottoman Empire: The Seder Eliyahu 

Zuta of Elijah Capsali and Its Message,” in Studies in Jewish Bibliography, History, and Literature in Honor of I. 
Edward Kiev, ed. Charles Berlin (New York: Ktav Pub. House, 1972), 21–44 at 27.

69.  Gennadios Scholarios, Oeuvres completes de Georges Scholarios, ed. Martin Jugie, Louis Petit, and 
Xenophon A. Siderides (Paris: Maison de la bonne presse, 1928–36), 3:434–58. See also Marie-Hélène Blanchet, 
Georges-Gennadios Scholarios, vers 1400-vers 1472: un intellectuel orthodoxe face à la disparition de l’Empire 
byzantin (Paris: Institut français d’études byzantines, 2008), 105–6. 



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faith in Greek, which would later be translated into Turkish and Arabic.70 In other words, as 
in the case of Amiroutzes, these dialogues not only relied on a variety of texts in different 
languages, but they also produced new texts, likewise in many tongues. 

We shall return to many of these threads—particularly those involving multilingualism, 
medicine, and theology—in the following sections. For now, a few crucial points bear 
stressing. George Amiroutzes and his circle of late Byzantine intellectuals, many of whom 
also worked as copyists at the court scriptorium, were at the center of the pedagogical 
and translation activity at the Ottoman court.71 Yet alongside these Greek scholars, many 
others, including Jews, Italians, and at least one notable Armenian physician, also engaged 
in related intellectual activity at court. Moreover, in addition to many Greek manuscripts, 
the Ottoman court library collected manuscripts in Latin, Italian, Syriac, Hebrew, Armenian, 
and possibly other non-Islamic languages. The court also ordered the preparation and 
purchase of materials to teach many of these languages, along with related scholarly 
subjects, as we shall discuss. This was a world, in other words, in which one language did 
not have a monopoly on knowledge production or statecraft; it was likewise a world in 
which the prevailing language ideology was to demonstrate a universalist command over 
the many languages that governed statecraft and knowledge production across the broader 
Mediterranean realm. The early Ottomans were in the business of scaffolding these primary 
languages of the Mediterranean into their own administrative and scholarly affairs, and, 
indeed, into their own projections of authority over the formerly Byzantine lands.

It is within this linguistic milieu, in which the future of Ottoman Turkish was far from 
certain, in which Greek and Arabic medical and philosophical knowledge were valorized, and 
in which diverse translators, theologians, physicians, and courtiers exchanged knowledge 
across languages with each other, that Middle Armenian found an unlikely home at the 
Ottoman court. 

Middle Armenian Knowledge Production and the Ottoman Court

The Byzantine Empire resettled many Armenians as a matter of policy. By the ninth 
century, a significant number of Armenians resided in Constantinople, many of whom were 
from elite families, such as the Mamikonean, Aršakuni, and Kamsarakan, who sought refuge 
in the city.72 The early Ottomans also pursued similar relocation policies following the 

70.  Mavroudi, “Translators from Greek into Arabic,” 96. 
71.  Amiroutzes also copied a number of Greek manuscripts at the scriptorium. Other copyists who were 

illustrious figures in the last generation of the Byzantine empire include Matthew Kamariotes, John Dokeianos, 
John Eugenikos, and Demetrios Angelos. For the manuscripts copied by Amiroutzes himself, see Luigi Orlandi, 
“La scrittura greca di Giorgio Amirutze: Una proposta,” Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici 56 (2019): 193–222; 
for preliminaries about the other copyists, see Raby, “Mehmed the Conqueror’s Greek Scriptorium.”

72.  On Armenian assimilation within the Byzantine Empire, see the overview by Nina G. Garsoïan, “The 
Problem of Armenian Integration into the Byzantine Empire,” in Studies on the Internal Diaspora of the 
Byzantine Empire, ed. Hélène Ahrweiler and Angeliki E. Laiou, 53–124 (Washington, DC: Harvard University Press, 
1998). Many Armenians seem to have joined the ranks of the Byzantine political elite in Constantinople, such as 
Patriarch John VII (837–43), who was also known as John the Grammarian and was of possible Armenian origin. 
Other elite figures, such as Caesar Bardas (d. 866), who patronized the Magnaura University (Pandidakterion) 



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conquest of Constantinople in 1453, in part to replenish the city’s population. The Ottoman 
census of the city in 1477 registered some 400 Armenian households from Karaman, for 
example; Hayk Pērpērean places the total Armenian population of Constantinople and Galata 
at around 817 households at this time.73 In whatever capacity that the settled Armenian 
populace spoke Armenian in Constantinople, they would have spoken dialectal forms of 
the medieval vernacular. Sometime in between these Byzantine and Ottoman policies of 
resettlement, then, Middle Armenian made its way to Constantinople in two primary ways: 
first, in the mouths and minds of westwardly migrating Armenians; and second, in the 
Middle Armenian manuscripts that circulated throughout the Anatolian peninsula. 

These two threads are tightly braided together in the figure of Amirdovlat‘ of Amasya 
(d. 1496), an Armenian physician who directly connects the strands of Middle Armenian 
knowledge production in Cilicia to the milieu in which Meḥmed II’s Hexaglot Grammar was 
produced.74 Amirdovlat‘ is particularly important to this story, not only because he studied 
and cites Middle Armenian medical texts produced in medieval Cilicia, but also because 
he was affiliated with the Ottoman court and with Meḥmed II specifically. Moreover, 
he composed many texts that draw on his knowledge of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Latin, 
and Greek, such as his Baṙn Gałianosi (Glossary of Galen) and the Axrapatin, which is an 
adaptation of Maimonides’ pharmacological dictionary, a work he could have had access to 
directly at the court library.75 

in Constantinople, had kinship ties to the Armenian Mamikonean dynasty. See also Manea Erna Shirinian, 
“Armenian Elites in Constantinople: Emperor Basil and Patriarch Photius,” in Armenian Constantinople, ed. 
Richard G. Hovannisian and Simon Payaslian, 53–72 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2010). On the material 
culture of Armenians in Constantinople, beginning in this period, see Ronald T. Marchese and Marlene R. Breu, 
“Intersection of Society, Culture, and Religion: The Constantinople Style and Armenian Identity,” in Armenian 
Constantinople, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian and Simon Payaslian, 101–37 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 
2010).

73.  Hayk Pērpērean, “Istanpuli hay bnakč‘ut‘iwnǝ k‘ałak‘in grawumēn minč‘ew Fat‘ih Mehmet B.i mahǝ,” 
Handēs Amsōreay 76 (1962): 213–27, 405–24. See also Halil İnalcık, The Survey of Istanbul 1455: The Text, English 
Translation, Analysis of the Text, Documents (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası, 2012), 595–99. 

74.  For select studies on Amirdovlat‘, see S. A. Vardanyan, Amirdovlat Amasiatsi: A Fifteenth-Century 
Armenian Natural Historian and Physician, trans. Michael Yoshpa, ed. Ara Der Marderosian (Delmar, NY: 
Caravan Books, 1999); S. A. Vardanyan, “Amirdovlat‘ Amasiac‘u haykakan ałbyurnerǝ,” Patma-Banasirakan 
Handes 1–2 (1994): 209–224; John L. Gueriguian, “Amirdovlat‘ Amasiatsi‘i: His Life and Contributions,” Journal 
of the Society for Armenian Studies 3 (1987): 63–91; John L. Gueriguian, “Foods and Drinks in Fifteenth-Century 
Anatolia, as Recorded by Amirdovlat Amasiats‘i,” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 14 (2005): 155–66.

75.  According to ʿAṭūfī’s inventory, the court library had two copies of Maimonides’ Glossary of Drug Names 
(Sharḥ Asmāʾ al-ʿaqqār), whose unicum extant manuscript today (MS Ayasofya 3711) once belonged to the 
Ottoman court. This work is a pharmacopeia consisting of more than 400 entries, providing the names of drugs 
in Arabic, Greek, Persian, Syriac, Berber, and Spanish. See Max Meyerhof, “Sur un glossaire de matière médicale 
arabe composé par Maïmonide,” Bulletin de l’institut d’Égypte 17, no. 2 (1934): 223–35. For an English translation 
of the work, see Moses Maimonides, Moses Maimonides’ Glossary of Drug Names, trans. Fred Rosner (Philadelphia, 
PA: American Philosophical Society, 1979); for ‘Aṭūfī ’s inventory entry, see Gülru Necipoğlu, Cemal Kafadar, and 
Cornell H. Fleischer, eds., Treasures of Knowledge: An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3–1503/4) 
(Leiden: Brill, 2019), 1: 552, 632, 634, 2:119. Moreover, a copy of the Hebrew commentary by Mordecai ben Eliezer 
Komatiano (d. 1482) on Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed was completed in the court scriptorium in 1480. See 
Topkapı Palace Library, G.I. 53; Amirdovlat‘ could have benefitted from this courtly interest in Maimonides. For 



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It is useful to recall that this set of languages in Amirdovlat‘’s work, minus Arabic, also 
mirrors the linguistic contents of the Hexaglot Grammar. Amirdovlat‘ composed his prolific 
corpus of medical dictionaries in Middle Armenian, largely in Constantinople, even going 
as far as to theorize his use of the “vernacular” within this context, as we shall see. Just as 
importantly, his broad scientific and philosophic interests serve as a foil to those of both 
Meḥmed II and the intellectual circle of Amiroutzes, providing a microcosmic look at Middle 
Armenian’s many interfaces with scientific knowledge in Constantinople generally, and the 
court of Meḥmed II in particular. Consequently, in this and the following section, we offer 
a selective portrait of Middle Armenian in Constantinople at this period in time, expanding 
upon the linguistic context in which the Middle Armenian of the Hexaglot Grammar was 
produced. 

Amirdovlat‘ provides a useful case study in how “secular” Armenian figures (by which 
we mean Armenians who were not priests or monks) participated in knowledge production 
in the fifteenth century. His name means “Prince of Fortune” in Arabic, though it is written 
in a Perso-Turkish pronunciation, and is perhaps a reflection of the several mixed Muslim 
and non-Muslim neighborhoods of his city, as Cemal Kafadar has observed.76 He was born 
in the 1420s in Amasya, in northern Anatolia, which was a thriving center of scholarship 
and culture. The renowned physician Şerefe’d-dīn Ṣabuncuoğlu (d. 1468) also lived here, 
composing the first Ottoman Turkish surgical textbook, presented to Meḥmed II upon its 
completion in 1465 (see Fig. 6).77 Amirdovlat‘ seems to have left Amasya sometime in his 
twenties, only to return much later in life. These sojourns may have included different 
regions of Anatolia and the Iranian plateau; we know that for a time he also resided in Filibe 
(Plovdiv, Bulgaria). By his own account, he says that eventually “we came and resided in the 
metropolis of Constantinople, [where] we collected many writings from other peoples. And, 
laboring, we learned different (azgi azgi) words and nouns, and [their] equivalents, and took 
their measure, in five languages, by the will of God.”78 

more information on G.I. 53, see Raby, “Mehmed the Conqueror’s Greek Scriptorium,” 17; and D. A. Deissmann, 
Forschungen und Funde im Serai: Mit einem Verzeichnis der nichtislamischen Handschriften im Topkapu Serai 
zu Istanbul (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1933), 87.

76.  Kafadar, “Between Amasya and Istanbul,” 87. 
77.  Two copies of Ṣabuncuoğlu’s surgical textbook (Cerrāḥiyetʾl-ḫāniye) were completed by the author 

himself. One of them, currently in Paris, was presented to Meḥmed II. See Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 
Supplément Turc 693; cf. Nükhet Varlık, “Books on Medicine: Medical Knowledge at Work,” in Treasures of 
Knowledge: An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3–1503/4), Volume I: Essays, ed. Gülru Necipoğlu, 
Cemal Kafadar, and Cornell H. Fleischer, 527–55 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 548; Sabuncuoğlu also translated a 
pharmacopeia from Persian, entitled Tercüme-i aḳrābāẕīn. See Süleymaniye Library, MS Fatih 3536. 

78.  Amirdovlat‘ Amasiac‘i, Angitac‘ anpēt, 3.



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Fig. 6.  Şerefe’d-dīn Ṣabuncuoğlu, Cerrāḥiyetʾl-Hāniye. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 
Supplément Turc 693, 21r. Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.



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Amirdovlat‘’s activity as scholar, collector, and commissioner of manuscripts is well-
known. One scribe reports that he decorated a Psalter with gold at the request of Amirdovlat‘ 
in 1490; another scribe copied a treatise on the soul for Amirdovlat‘ and his son in 1480.79 A 
particularly useful portrait of the physician can be found in the colophon for a collection of 
Armenian commentaries on the works of Porphyry and Aristotle, copied in Amasya in 1492. 
Here the scribe establishes his benefactor’s relationship with the Ottoman court, which he 
says valued Amirdovlat‘’s erudition. In this manner, he praises Amirdovlat‘ as:

a second Ptolemy of the present age in his study of books, for he has translated many 
books from the language of the Arabs and the Persians into our speech (barbaṙ), 
knowing expertly their writing and language. He is respected and honored by the kings 
of the Ishmaelites, for first he resided in the cities of Amasya and then he departed for 
Constantinople, to the king, who was called Mahamad Khan (Meḥmed II). And after 
[the latter’s] death, his grandson Sultan Ahmad dispatched and brought [Amirdovlat‘] 
with him to this city, Amasya, the place of [Amirdovlat‘’s] youth, and welcomed him 
with much love.80

The typological association of Ptolemy with Amirdovlat‘ in this context was likely not 
coincidental, as Meḥmed II had a particular fascination with the Alexandrian scientist. In 
fact, the Ottoman palace library housed many copies of Ptolemy’s works, including the 
Geography (G.I. 27 and G.I. 57) and two copies of al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 1274) work on Ptolemy’s 
Almagest (Süleymaniye Library, MS TurhanValide 219, and Millet Library MS Feyzullah 
1360), both of which were copied for Meḥmed II’s personal use. Moreover, Amiroutzes 
translated Ptolemy’s Geography into Arabic with the help of his son Basil upon Meḥmed’s 
commission in 1465. Before this gargantuan task, Amiroutzes had already prepared a world 
map for the sultan based on scattered maps in Ptolemy’s work.81 In the case of this colophon, 
the Armenian scribe leverages Meḥmed II’s interest in Ptolemy as a way of explaining 
Amirdovlat‘’s apparently multigenerational relationship with the Ottoman rulers, rooted in 
a corresponding command over many branches of science. If Amiroutzes was the Aristotle 
of the age, Amirdovlat‘’s circle positioned him as its Ptolemy, seemingly in counterpoint.

79.  Amirdovlat‘ Amasiac‘i, Angitac‘ anpēt, viii; L. S. Xač‘ikyan, ed., ZhE dari hayeren jeṙagreri hišatakaranner. 
Masn erkrord: 1451–1480 t‘t‘. (Yerevan: Haykakan SAṘ Gitut‘yunneri Akademiayi Hratarakčut‘yun, 1958), 441–42.

80.  Gēorg Tēr-Vardanean, ed., Mayr c‘uc‘ak hayerēn jeṙagrac‘ Maštoc‘i anuan Matenadarani (Yerevan: 
“Nayiri” Hratarakč‘ut‘iwn, 2012), 6: 573–76.

81.  Today, two copies of this translation survive. See Süleymaniye Library, MSS Ayasofya 2610 and Ayasofya 
2596. In addition, George of Trebizond translated his Latin introduction to Ptolemy’s Almagest into Greek for 
the sultan, after Amiroutzes’ recommendation. See Monfasani, Collectanea Trapezuntiana, 281–82. The court 
library also possessed the Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Geography by Jacopo d’Angelo (d. 1411). See Topkapı 
Palace, G.I. 44. Finally, around the time of Meḥmed II’s death, Francesco Berlinghieri prepared a decorated copy 
of his Ptolemy translation in Italian (G. I. 84). However, upon receiving the news of Meḥmed II’s demise, he 
added a second dedication to Bāyezīd, whereas his printed edition was dedicated to the Duke of Urbino.



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Fig. 7. Colophon referring to Amirdovlat‘ as cerrāḥ başı and bostāncı başı. Paris, Bibliothèque 
nationale, Arménien 247, 88v. Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.



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Amirdovlat‘ states that he served at the Ottoman court in his own writings, though his 
precise role is somewhat unclear. For instance, at the end of one colophon, he refers to 
himself using traditional titles of the Ottoman court, asking readers to remember him to God 
as cerrāḥ başı (chief surgeon) and bostāncı başı (chief gardener, traditionally a commander 
of the imperial guard) (see Fig. 7).82 It is uncertain to what degree (or whether) Amirdovlat‘’s 
use of these titles corresponds to offices he held.83 This fact is further obfuscated by his use 
of the term bostāncı başı, which was later reserved for the head of the imperial guard, 
who also tended gardens and grew vegetables outside of the palace and different parts of 
Istanbul. Perhaps Amirdovlat‘ had something mundane in mind. Certainly, as he attests 
elsewhere, his knowledge of gardening and botany was extensive, and he reports that he 
spent much time wandering the countryside around Constantinople in search of specific 
plants to use in his medicinal products.84 Moreover, in calling himself “chief surgeon,” 
Amirdovlat‘ seems to have styled himself in a similar vein as Mxit‘ar Herac‘i, who earned 
the title “chief physician” (bžškapet) in Armenian Cilicia, though cerrāḥ başı certainly 
resonates with an altogether different courtly setting.

Whatever the precise standing of Amirdovlat‘ at the Ottoman court, it is clear that 
he had a complex relationship with Meḥmed II, who forcibly relocated both Armenians 
and Armenian manuscript culture to Constantinople. In 1480, an Armenian scribe named 
Martiros described this practice, drawing attention to Amirdovlat‘’s desire to liberate 
Armenian manuscripts from the sultan’s “captivity.” In his colophon, Martiros described 
the days when Meḥmed II demolished the city of Bayburt near the conclusion of a lengthy 
military campaign: 

[Meḥmed II] brought a psalter, a fine and excellent copy, as captive (geri) to 
Constantinople. The physician Amirdovlat‘ obtained and manumitted this holy book 
from captivity (i gerut‘enē). This happened in the year 922 (= 1473). Moreover, in the 
year of the Armenian era 928 (= 1479), the xōntk‘ar (Meḥmed II) drove the Armenian 
people of the region of Karaman into exile (Armenian: surkun; Ottoman Turkish: sürgün). 
And they also brought me, a worthless bit of dust, to Constantinople, [to be put] into 
the service of our holy vardapet Lord Mat‘ēos of Sepastia and vardapet Abraham of 
Trebizond, whom the xōndk‘ar (Meḥmed II) had brought for the patriarchal office. 
They did not accept [this office], considering monastic life better than receiving glory 
from men.85

82.  Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Arménien MS 247, 88v.
83.  According to an endowment chart of Meḥmed II’s mosque complex drafted in 1470, the complex’s hospital 

had various fixed posts, including one ophthalmologist and one surgeon. We have reports of Amirdovlat‘ serving 
the Ottoman court in both capacities, but the holders of these posts were not named in the endowment. In 
addition to personal physicians of the sultan and high dignitaries, the court maintained a hospital to take care of 
pages and servants in the enderūn (internal service). However, we know very little about its form and functions 
in the fifteenth century. Nevertheless, it is clear that the court hospital had a cerrāḥ başı (chief surgeon). For 
the endowment chart, see Süheyl Ünver, “Fatih Külliyesine Ait Diğer Mühim Bir Vesika,” Vakıflar Dergisi 1 
(1938): 39–46; For the cerrāḥ başı position at the court hospital, see Nil Sarı, “Cerrahlık: Osmanlılar’da Cerrahlık 
Mesleği,” in TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı 1993), 7:424.

84.  Vardanyan, Amirdovlat Amasiatsi, 86–87.
85.  L. S. Xač‘ikyan, ed., ZhE dari hayeren jeṙagreri hišatakaranner. Masn erkrord: 1451–1480 t‘t‘ (Yerevan: 

Haykakan SAṘ Gitut‘yunneri Akademiayi Hratarakčut‘yun, 1958), 441.



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Fig. 8. Detail. Meḥmed II with Armenian celibate priest. Seyyid Lokman, Hünername. Istanbul, Topkapı 
Palace Museum Library, MS H 1523, 162v. Photo courtesy of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library.



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Numerous other colophons reflect on this policy of resettlement, which also included 
Armenians from Amasya. Likewise, the Greek historian of the Ottoman court, Kritovoulos, 
observed that the sultan deported Armenians who possessed “technical knowledge and 
other qualifications” to Constantinople.86 Meḥmed II emerges in these accounts as a shrewd 
figure, one relentlessly expanding the boundaries of his domain even as he seems to have 
offered the “patriarchal office” in Constantinople to a number of Armenian clergymen 
before appointing Yovakim of Bursa (d. 1478) to the role in 1461 (see Fig. 8).87 In this 
particular colophon, Martiros describes Meḥmed II’s seizure of an Armenian manuscript in 
the same terms as he depicts these policies of resettlement: hence Meḥmed II “captures” 
the Classical Armenian Psalter as part of a broader campaign of relocating Armenians 
in exile (sürgün). Yet unlike the newly settled Armenians in Constantinople, who must 
remain against their will, the manuscript is delivered from “captivity” by none other than 
Amirdovlat‘, who seems to have benefited from his relationship with Meḥmed II in this 
case, receiving the manuscript for his use and safekeeping. 

But what was Meḥmed II doing with an Armenian Psalter in the first place? Martiros 
describes Amirdovlat‘ as having “found” or “obtained” the manuscript, whereupon he was 
able to rescue it from “captivity.” Perhaps he came across this manuscript at the Topkapı 
palace library, which houses a handful of Armenian manuscripts today.88 Some of these, such 
as MS 124 (Old 28), a thirteenth-century Armenian copy of the Gospels from Cilicia, came to 
Topkapı later in time (in this case, in 1908/9). Others were only copied after Meḥmed II’s 
time, such as MS 122, an illuminated copy of the Gospels that was made in 1584–85. It is 
possible that this list is not exhaustive, however; Meḥmed II’s Hexaglot Grammar suggests 
that other Armenian texts may still await reassessment, as catalogers have overlooked its 
Armenian language content partly because it was not housed with the other “non-Islamic” 
languages. 

86.  Kritovoulos, the Greek historian who served at the Ottoman court, notes that Meḥmed II “sent to 
Amastris [Amasra], a city of Paphlagonia and a port on the Euxine Sea, and transported to Constantinople the 
larger and more able part of its people. He also transported to the City those of the Armenians under his rule 
who were outstanding in the point of property, wealth, technical knowledge and other qualifications, and in 
addition those who were of the merchant class. These he took from their homes and removed to the City, and 
not only Armenians, but also such persons from other nations among his subjects” (Kritovoulos, History of 
Mehmed, 140).

87.  Contemporary Armenian and non-Armenian sources do not seem to refer to this “office” as the 
“patriarchate” with consistency or even frequency, however. On the establishment of the Armenian 
Patriarchate, which did not enjoy the same authority in the fifteenth century as it did in later centuries, see 
especially Bardakjian, “The Rise of the Armenian Patriarchate.”

88.  See D. A. Deissmann, Forschungen und Funde im Serai: Mit einem Verzeichnis der nichtislamischen 
Handschriften im Topkapu Serai zu Istanbul (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1933), 128, 131–33.



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Fig. 9. Amirdovlat‘. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, G.I. 116, 2v. Photo courtesy of the 
Topkapı Palace Museum Library.



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Fig. 10. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, G.I. 116, 4v–5r. Photo courtesy of the 
Topkapı Palace Museum Library.

For our purposes, the most significant Armenian manuscript in the Ottoman palace is 
a late sixteenth-century medical treatise, mixed with religious material, composed in a 
form of Middle Armenian (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, G.I. 116). The codex, a visual 
feast comprising 307 folios, features a number of peculiarities, the least of which is that 
its shorthand generally drops Armenian vowels and employs Arabic numerals whenever 
possible. Strikingly, the codex is illustrated with a series of lively miniatures, including 
engraved images incorporated from a printed book (fols. 116r, 135v), blending book and 
manuscript arts.89 Most germane to this study, its frontispiece features an illustration of 
none other than Amirdovlat‘ himself. Here Amirdovlat‘ stands attentively on the right hand 
side, apparently ready to assist the compiler, whose hand is poised over a blank folio (see 
Fig. 9). Moreover, this miniature is followed by several depictions of pharmacological labor 
(see Fig. 10), one of which features a second image of Amirdovlat‘, facing another physician, 
on the right hand side of fol. 4v. Finally, near the end of the codex, we find a third, smaller 
portrait of Amirdovlat‘, who appears in the upper right-hand corner of a grid containing 
notable physicians and philosophers (see Fig. 11). These figures of Amirdovlat‘ appear 

89.  It is well known that early Armenian printed books mimicked the style and layout of early modern 
and medieval manuscripts; in this manuscript, we find the inversion of this practice: manuscripts selectively 
mimicking and incorporating aspects of the printed book.



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with a yellow nimbus around their heads, as though sainted, much like the depictions of 
St. Sargis and St. George featured elsewhere in the codex (fols. 291v–292r). Thus, while 
the manuscript does not date from our period, it does suggest a continuing interest at the 
palace library in Amirdovlat‘ specifically, along with an explicit nod to his significance as 
both a physician and an Armenian Christian. It would seem that roughly over a century 
after Amirdovlat‘’s death, his presence had not faded from the cross-confessional study 
and practice of medicine at the Ottoman court. Instead, as the miniatures imply, the spirit 
of Amirdovlat‘ still engaged in the pedagogical labor of instructing other students and 
physicians in Constantinople.

Fig. 11. 
Istanbul, 

Topkapı Palace 
Museum Library, 

G.I. 116, 295r. Photo 
courtesy of the Top-
kapı Palace Museum 

Library.



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Beyond the palace library, it is worth expanding our search for Armenian manuscripts in 
Constantinople to the Armenian Patriarchate, an institution that Meḥmed II established in 
a limited form, to give us a fuller picture of Armenian manuscript culture in the city. The 
Patriarchate’s library contains many Armenian manuscripts in Classical Armenian, such 
as a thirteenth-century copy of the Gospels from Cilicia, which bears a colophon stating 
that its silver cover was stolen in Constantinople during the time of the third Armenian 
patriarch (MS 20). Similarly, it also houses a fourteenth-century illuminated Psalter from 
Cilicia (MS 26), which mentions King Lewon III in a colophon, and likely was not so different 
from the manuscript Amirdovlat‘ rescued from “captivity.” The Armenian Patriarchate also 
houses scientific and philosophic texts from this period, such as MS 248, a fifteenth-century 
miscellany that contains an Armenian commentary on Aristotle’s categories, a treatise by 
Nersēs Šnorhali on the astrological signs, and poetry by Yovhannēs of Erzincan, including a 
lengthy poem on the nativity of Christ. 

We do not know if these manuscripts had any relationship to the court of Meḥmed II. 
Still, it is possible to speculate on the court’s apparent interest in an Armenian Psalter 
in light of the circulation and preservation of such texts, many of which hailed from 
Armenian Cilicia, in Constantinople at this time. As we have seen, the early Ottomans took 
an engaged interest in Christianity, sponsoring debates at court on the nature and divinity 
of Christ since the earliest days of the Ottoman Empire. Most notably for our purposes, 
in the summer of 1355 a Greek-speaking Christian physician of Armenian descent named 
Taronites entered into the summer court in Bursa of Orhan (r. 1324–62), who was afflicted 
with liver disease and needed treatment. Taronites had come at the invitation of Gregory 
Palamas (d. 1357), the Bishop of Thessaloniki, who had been captured by the Ottomans. 
When Orhan recovered, he took an interest in Palamas, inviting the latter to join him in 
theological debate. Yet it was Taronites who preserved these discussions in writing, in his 
own hand. In this manner, Armenian physicians like Taronites and Amirdovlat‘ seem to 
have been present at the Ottoman court both for their access to medical knowledge and for 
their relationship with Christianity, which was a matter for open discussion.90 The episode is 
also particularly notable for its potential connection to Armenian medical knowledge. After 
all, as noted earlier, the earliest extant Middle Armenian text dates to 1037 and describes 
treatment for the inflammation of the liver. In a substantial way, Middle Armenian was the 
language of Armenian medicine; a Middle Armenian presence at the Ottoman court may 
perhaps have emerged long before the Hexaglot Grammar came into existence. 

Last but not least, it is significant that the Ottoman “capture” of a Classical Armenian 
Psalter did not occur in a vacuum. Alongside Armenian religious texts at the Topkapı Library 
are a large number of other liturgical Christian works, mostly in Greek, but also in Syriac 
and Arabic. As we have seen, courtly debates on religion were informed both by the study 
of manuscripts and by the presence of diverse Christians and Jews who were also present 
at the Ottoman court. In this context, it is not entirely surprising to find both erudite 
Armenian figures with relationships to the court, and the court’s apparent interest in the 
collection of Classical Armenian religious manuscripts. 

90.  Martin Vucetic, “Taronites,” in Christian-Muslim Relations Online I: 600–1500 (Leiden: Brill Online), 
posted March 24, 2010. 



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Besides its collection in Classical Armenian, the Patriarchate also houses Middle 
Armenian manuscripts that explicitly reflect a courtly milieu. These Middle Armenian 
texts also generally concern medicine in some capacity, showcasing Middle Armenian’s 
utility as a language of knowledge production long after the collapse of Armenian Cilicia.91 
In fact, Amirdovlat‘ composed the most significant Middle Armenian manuscript in the 
collection from this period, MS 43 (Old), which was copied in the fifteenth century. This 
work is his Ōgut bžškut‘ean (The Benefit of Medicine), originally composed between 1466 
and 1469, during a period when the author was absent from Constantinople and residing 
in Bulgaria.92 In his introduction, Amirdovlat‘ correlates the study of religion, the study of 
medicine, and the relationship between physicians and sovereigns for his readers in quite 
direct terms. “And moreover be aware,” he writes in Middle Armenian in the first line, 
“that these medicines are opportune for every man to study, for the reason that there is no 
more glorious [form of] study than this, [that] which always seeks the health of man, [for] 
the Lord God has made nothing more glorious and honorable than man.”93 To learn the art 
of medicine, in this light, is to be in compliance with the divine will, as was Moses, who 
fell deathly ill and yet would accept no medication that did not come from God. Thus, as 
Amirdovlat‘ extolls to his readers, “it is opportune for kings and nobles to keep a wise and 
skillful physician nearby, so that when [such a person] is needed, they would not search [for 
him] in other places, or bring him from another country, since man does not always remain 
healthy.”94

For Amirdovlat‘, who had presumably been brought to Constantinople by Meḥmed II, 
these words could not have been more pointed. Not coincidentally, the majority of his 
introduction concerns the duties a physician has toward the sovereign. As Amirdovlat‘ 
explains, medicine is like a weapon (Middle Armenian: sleh; Arabic/Persian: silāḥ), and 
needs to be ready for the king to wield, not only at times of sickness but at every occasion; 
hence, the armsman (Middle Armenian: slehtar; Persian: silāḥ-dār) must remain close by. 
The physician must be “erudite and wise” so the king accepts his speech; he must sit with 
the king at meals and inspect his food, ensuring that the signs of subtle poisons are not 
present; likewise he must inspect the king’s wine, and even the flowers in the palace, for 
signs of treachery, “since kings and nobles have many enemies;” finally the wise physician 
must be discrete, keeping the secrets of his patients, and looking after not only the health 

91.  For example, MS 27, a miscellany from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, contains an essay that draws 
on medicinal metaphors to make points about Christianity. 

92.  The title of this work is reminiscent of other medical treatises cataloged by ʿAṭūfī in the Ottoman palace 
library, such as the Kitāb Luqaṭ al-manāfiʿ fī al-ṭibb (Book of Gleanings on the Benefit of Medicine), composed in 
Arabic, in particular. See Varlık, “Books on Medicine,” 547. 

93.  Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul MS 43 (Old), 10r. In this particular manuscript, parts of the text are 
missing at the beginning of new paragraphs where the copyist left space for words in a different color of ink, 
which were never filled in. For the text translated here, see also the discussion by Donara Karapétian in the 
introduction to Amirdovlat‘ Amasiac‘i, Usumn bžškut‘eann ē ays, ed. Donara Karapétian (Yerevan: Matenadaran 
Press, 2014), xxv–vvxi.

94.  Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul MS 43 (Old), 10v.



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of a household but its wares and business in general.95 It would seem that Amirdovlat‘ either 
spoke from experience or at least framed his manual to be used by students with courtly 
aspirations. Moreover, the wise physician, whom he calls both a hak‘im, using the Arabic/
Persian term (ḥakīm), and a bžišk, the Armenian term, needed to be versed in more than 
medicine alone. Rather, he implies that the hak‘im must be broadly educated and a shrewd 
observer of human behavior especially. 

This emphasis on “study” and learning, addressed explicitly to students (and, one senses 
in its opening lines, to unnamed kings), is particularly significant. It is a throughline that 
weaves throughout Amirdovlat‘’s body of work. Nevertheless, it is difficult to surmise, 
precisely, who these “students” were. As we have seen, emphasis on study was a primary 
focus of Meḥmed II in his own self-fashioning as an educated king, and this extended to 
his court at large, including adults and young language-learners at the palace school. The 
pursuit of study was also a notable feature of the Cilician Armenian court at Sis, where the 
nobility listened to the recitation of Middle Armenian texts every day in the afternoon.96 
The historical Cilician and Ottoman “students” of knowledge produced in Middle Armenian 
thus seem to have included cohorts with access to the resources of their respective courts. 
Amirdovlat‘’s explicit evocation of a courtly milieu (at a time, we should recall, when there 
were no longer Armenian kingdoms) certainly seems to underscore an elite audience which 
was affiliated with these courtly circles of learning, whether Armenian or not.

Although this is—to some degree—speculation, it is made more plausible by the existence 
of the Hexaglot Grammar and its corresponding transliteration system for the Armenian 
and Arabic scripts, which show that early Ottoman officials did consider Middle Armenian a 
language worth learning. In very broad terms, it also seems clear what kinds of texts would 
have been available to such officials: liturgical, historical, and religious works, generally 
in Classical Armenian, on the one hand; and medical, scientific, astrological, and so-called 
“heterodox” religious works, such as talismanic prayers and poetry on Christianity, 
generally in Middle Armenian, on the other.97 Ottoman rulers and their courts moreover 
already had elite Armenian religious leaders at their immediate disposal to explain the finer 
points of religious doctrine to them, hypothetically in a shared tongue such as Greek or 
perhaps Persian. After all, Meḥmed II reportedly sought to establish, following a period of 
trial and error, an Armenian patriarchate in his newly conquered city—though, notably, in 
a far different form than the institution would appear in later centuries—forcibly relocating 

95.  Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul MS 43 (Old), 10v–11r.
96.  Near the end of the thirteenth century, the Dominican traveler Burchard of Mount Sion spent three weeks 

with King Lewon II, the son of Het‘um I. Burchard observed that every day at three o’clock in the afternoon, 
members of the clergy would come and read books to the nobility and their families “in the common tongue (in 
uulgari),” because they supposedly did not know other languages. See Burchard of Mount Sion, O.P., Descriptio 
Terrae Sanctae, ed. and trans. John R. Bartlett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 206–7.

97.  These categories, and their general alignment with different registers of Classical and Middle Armenian, 
are far from absolute and should not be taken as anything other than illustrative here. On so-called “heterodox” 
material, see the insightful overview of the first five books printed in Armenian in Venice, 1512/13–1513/14, 
which were based on manuscripts from across Anatolia that were composed in both Classical and Middle 
Armenian provided in Jean-Pierre Mahé, “La piété de Yakob, premier imprimeur arménien,” in Le Livre arménien 
de la Renaissance aux Lumières: une culture en diaspora, ed. Mikaël Nichanian and Yann Sordet, 13–21 (Paris, 
Éditions des Cendres-Bibliothèque Mazarine, 2012).



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many additional Armenian clergymen in the process.98 The finer points of Classical Armenian 
theology could be discussed at length, in another language, with the right go-between. It 
is all the more striking, then, that Ottoman educators at the palace school seem to have 
reserved the option to teach Middle Armenian and not Classical at this liminal moment in 
Ottoman history—and not only as a language to speak, but also potentially as a language to 
read and write. 

Of course, it is possible that the Armenian-language contributor to the Hexaglot Grammar 
only knew Middle Armenian; alternatively, perhaps the Ottomans simply did not care if they 
communicated in the “vernacular” so long as their message was more or less understood 
overall. Still, the opposite may also be true: Middle Armenian arguably appears in the 
Hexaglot Grammar, alongside the other prestige languages of power and culture in the 
Mediterranean, in no small part because the Cilician project of correlating Middle Armenian 
with knowledge production and stately authority was so successful that it enjoyed greater 
longevity than did the Cilician Armenian kingdom itself. As we have labored to show, these 
two poles—the apparent ubiquity and ease of communicating in the vernacular at one 
end, and the ongoing use of Middle Armenian as a scientific language, and therefore as a 
language of elites, on the other—were not mutually exclusive, either. 

What Amirdovlat‘ makes certain, at the very least, is that Middle Armenian as a language 
of knowledge production coincided, geographically, temporally, and even socially, with the 
program of the multilingual inclusiveness of the early Ottoman court. Most importantly, 
his presence at Meḥmed II’s court suggests that the language’s utility in fifteenth-century 
Constantinople may not have been limited only to a pragmatic need to communicate 
with the lesser-educated or uneducated Armenians of the empire. In fact, as we shall 
see, Amirdovlat‘ makes an illustrative case against flattening Middle Armenian into an 
indiscriminately universal mode of communication for Armenian audiences at this moment 
in time. Rather, his was a language whose diverse specializations interfaced with the other 
major languages of the Mediterranean world, and moreover did so for the benefit of specific 
audiences. 

Amirdovlat‘ and The Worlding of Middle Armenian

Fortunately, we do not have to speculate about how Amirdovlat‘ considered his own 
vernacular: he theorizes his use of Middle Armenian in relation to other languages rather 
explicitly. In general, he clearly labels his Middle Armenian as ašxarhabaṙ, meaning 
“vernacular” or “worldly speech,” or as a ṙamkakan (vulgar) language.99 Moreover, he tends 
to frame his turn to the vernacular as a deliberate choice. 

98.  See Bardakjian, “The Rise of the Armenian Patriarchate.”
99.  This seems to be the case for Amirdovlat‘’s Girk‘ ṙamkakan (Common or Vulgar Book), which he says 

was adapted from the tačik (Arabic or Persian) language into Middle Armenian. See Gueriguian, “Amirdovlat‘ 
Amasiats‘i,” 72. He may also refer to the vernacular simply as “the Armenian language” in other instances. 
For example, in one manuscript, he complains that he found many medical texts in Constantinople that were 
full of errors “in the Armenian language.” See Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Arménien MS 247, 88v. Given the 
widespread use of Middle Armenian as a language of medical practice, this would seem to be a reference to the 
vernacular, though of course one should not preclude the possibility that it is instead a description of Classical 
Armenian. 



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Nowhere is this more apparent than in his masterwork. In 1478, after returning to 
Constantinople, Amirdovlat‘ began to write the Angitac‘ anpēt (Useless for the Ignorant), a 
monumental pharmacopeia that Kafadar has called “an astonishing achievement,” despite 
it being virtually ignored by Ottoman studies.100 Its title is reminiscent of other medical 
works cataloged by the Ottoman scholar and librarian ʿAṭūfī in the palace library, such as 
Yūsuf b. Ismāʿīl b. al-Kutubī’s Kitāb Mā lā yasaʿu al-ṭabīb jahlahu (Book of What No Physician 
Can Afford to Be Ignorant).101 Not coincidentally, as we shall discuss, it also extensively 
cites many authors of medical treatises housed at the Ottoman palace library. Perhaps most 
importantly, however, Amirdovlat‘’s masterwork contains over 3,700 entries that employ 
a mixed lexicon in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Armenian, Byzantine Greek, Syriac, Latin, 
and Old French (along with an abbreviation system to mark words in these languages, as 
Amirdovlat‘ explains in his introduction). Appropriately, as a linguistic foil to the Hexaglot 
Grammar, Useless for the Ignorant is written entirely in the Armenian script.

It took Amirdovlat‘ four years to complete this work, a time which he observes overlapped 
with the death of Meḥmed II and a turbulent period of succession in Constantinople. 
Nevertheless, he opens his introduction by stating that he wrote this book in the age of 
Meḥmed II, mentioning the conquest of Constantinople specifically, and then goes on to 
name contemporary figures such as the Armenian catholicos Sargis III and the second 
Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, Nikolayos. Amirdovlat‘ explicitly states that after 
he arrived in Constantinople he “collected many writings from other peoples.”102 Based on 
this assembly of manuscripts, one assumes, he then fashions an intellectual genealogy to 
burnish his own medical credentials, beginning with the Cilician physician Mxit‘ar Herac‘i 
and other Armenians, and encompassing many notable doctors who wrote in Greek or 
Arabic, such as Galen, Dioscorides, Ibn al-Bayṭār, and Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna).103 Just as he does 
for his languages, Amirdovlat‘ also fashions an abbreviation system to mark the names of 
these other physicians, so that readers can easily understand the many sources he cites 
in Useless for the Ignorant. It is worth noting that the Ottoman palace library housed an 
extensive collection of medical works composed by Galen, Dioscorides, Ibn al-Bayṭār, and 
Ibn Sīnā, and many other physicians from this period, as cataloged by the librarian ʿAṭūfī.104 
Hence it is not difficult to imagine that Amirdovlat‘ conducted some of his studies there, in 
the same library where the Hexaglot Grammar was in use. Certainly, we know of instances 
when courtiers or state officials studied the books at the court library or borrowed them;105 

100.  Kafadar, “Between Amasya and Istanbul,” 87.
101.  Varlık, “Books on Medicine,” 537.
102.  Amirdovlat‘ Amasiac‘i, Angitac‘ anpēt, 3.
103.  Amirdovlat‘ Amasiac‘i, Angitac‘ anpēt, 3.
104.  Out of the 341 manuscripts cataloged under medicine or subjects related to medicine by ‘Aṭūfī , one 

work is attributed to Dioscorides (in Arabic translation), eighteen to Galen (in Arabic translation), two to Ibn 
al-Bayṭār, and thirteen to Ibn Sīnā. Additional manuscripts include commentaries, especially on Galen and Ibn 
Sīnā. See Varlık, “Books on Medicine”.

105.  One illustrative example is found in Mordecai Komotiano, whose commentary on Maimonides was 
mentioned previously. Born in 1425 in Constantinople, Komotiano was a good representative of the generation 
which experienced the definitive shift from Byzantine to Ottoman rule. Thanks to his knowledge of astronomical 



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the grand vizier Maḥmūd Pasha even ordered medical books in Latin for the use of Yaʿḳūb 
Pasha.106 At the very least, it is clear that Amirdovlat‘ sought to bridge the gap between the 
Cilician body of medical knowledge, composed in Middle Armenian, and the primary works 
of other physicians, composed largely in Greek and Arabic, already under study at Meḥmed 
II’s court.107 His genealogy achieves this in theory; the rest of the pharmacopeia sets about 
to do this in practice.

After an overview of the principles of pharmacology, Amirdovlat‘ finally explains his 
choice to write in the vernacular at the end of his introduction. Despite possessing a 
seemingly simple style, Amirdovlat‘ makes it abundantly clear that his “worldly speech” 
encompasses more than widely spoken or vernacular grammatical forms. Most crucially, his 
Middle Armenian or “worldly speech” contains within it the diverse lexicons of the world:

And moreover let us ask “why was this book [made] in worldly speech (ašxarhabaṙ)?” 
And this is [due to] three reasons. One: It is this way because every man cannot read 
[classical] grammar (k‘erakan) or profane books, so that one might comprehend these 
obscure things; for this reason it was made in worldly speech. And the second reason 
for being in worldly speech is that we mixed in other words, [such as] terms we found 
from the Arabs/Muslims (i tačkac‘), and these words were necessary for us, in order 
to acquire the remedies of the Arabs/Muslims. And the third reason is that in this 

instruments, he gained the appreciation of an Ottoman Ḳāḍī‘asker (head of the religio-legal apparatus) in 
Constantinople in the 1460s. He also completed a work on Persian astronomical tables against the criticisms of 
Christian scholars, chiefly Isaac Argyros, in 1463. As mentioned earlier, his commentary on Maimonides’ Guide 
was copied in the court scriptorium in 1480, along with many Greek manuscripts. It is demonstrated conclusively 
that Komotiano used one particular Greek manuscript from the court collection (G.I. 1) in preparing his Hebrew 
mathematical treatise entitled the Book of Calculation and Measurements. For a granular examination of how 
Komatiano used G.I. 1, which contained the unique copy of Hero of Alexandria’s Metrica, see Tony Lévy and 
Bernard Vitrac, “Hero of Alexandria and Mordekhai Komtino: The Encounter between Mathematics in Hebrew 
and the Greek Metrological Corpus in Fifteenth-Century Constantinople,” Aleph 18, no. 2 (2018): 181–262. ‘Aṭūfī 
mentions in his inventory that he classified the books at the court according to disciplines which would make 
finding them easier when requested by the patrons. In addition, and just as demonstrative, some manuscripts 
from the court library have notes indicating that they had been checked out by readers. See Gülru Necipoğlu, 
“The Spatial Organization of Knowledge in the Ottoman Palace Library: An Encyclopedic Collection and Its 
Inventory,” in Treasures of Knowledge: An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3–1503/4), Volume I: 
Essays, ed. Gülru Necipoğlu, Cemal Kafadar, and Cornell H. Fleischer, 1–77 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 30. 

106.  Between 1466 and 1467, Maḥmūd Pasha sent two letters to the Senate and Rector of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) 
in order to help acquire Latin medical books from Italy for the use of Yaʿḳūb Pasha. In the second letter, he 
thanked the Rector for the three books he had so far received and asked for another three, one of which was 
a Latin commentary of Avicenna’s Canon by Taddeo Alderotti (d. 1295) and Gentile da Foligno (d. 1348), and 
another of which was Marsilio Santa Sofia’s (d. 1405) edition of Avicenna’s Canon. Unfortunately, the titles of the 
other books are not listed in the surviving letters. See Julian Raby, “East and West in Mehmed the Conqueror’s 
Library,” Bulletin du bibliophile 3 (1987): 15–34, at 303.

107.  For a kindred study that examines the exchange and interface between Greek and Arabic language 
medical works in the Byzantine empire, see Maria Mavroudi, “Arabic Terms in Byzantine Materia Medica: 
Oral and Textual Transmission,” in Drugs in the Medieval Mediterranean: Transmission and Circulation of 
Pharmacological Knowledge, ed. Petros Bouras-Vallianatos and Dionysios Stathakopoulos, 130–83 (Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 2023).



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book there is Arabic, Persian, Greek, and Turkish; it is because of this that this book is 
adapted from other languages. Thus, there are many words (baṙer) in this book, and it 
is in the vernacular (ašxarhabaṙ).108

There are many layers worth excavating here. Let us begin with the question of who 
has access to Middle Armenian. Amirdovlat‘ says that not every person can read classical 
“grammar,” and for this reason he wrote in the vernacular. It is also worth observing 
that the majority of Armenian grammars were generally not language textbooks; rather, 
for the most part, they furnished philosophies of language, and they largely did so in 
Classical Armenian. Hence, when the physician says that he wrote his medical dictionary in 
Middle Armenian, he implies that his language renders grammatically obscure knowledge 
comprehensible to those who are not otherwise invested in studying the philosophy of 
language or the “profane” writings of the ancients, generally referring to non-Christian 
authors. In the corpus of Armenian manuscripts, the writings of these ancients were usually 
translated in the classical language. The case here is different: Amirdovlat‘’s Armenian is 
outwardly facing, looking toward the world and not toward the clerical specialist of grabar. 

The next two reasons that he gives concern the worldly character of Middle Armenian, 
as both relate to the presence of foreign scientific terms and foreign words in general. In 
the first case, Amirdovlat‘ tells us that he took these words from “Muslims” and mixed 
them into his own Middle Armenian idiolect, precisely because these terms were attached 
to bodies of knowledge that he wanted to render in Armenian. These lexical “remedies” 
moreover provide a clear example of how Middle Armenian speakers continued to cultivate 
the vernacular even in the absence of the Cilician court. It is revealing that Amirdovlat‘ 
does not find the Classical Armenian equivalents of these words, but rather transliterates 
them into the Armenian script and then meticulously labels their linguistic origins. Hence 
Amirdovlat‘ labors upon Middle Armenian as a whole, through the microcosm of a medical 
word book, so that his language could express ideas about the physical world in a way that 
would be legible within a broader epistemic and linguistic ecosystem.

His final statements are the most revealing. “This book is adapted from other languages,” 
Amirdovlat‘ tells us. He does not say exactly that the book is adapted from other texts, and 
perhaps we should simply take him at his word. This book, and in fact Middle Armenian 
itself, is composed of many other lexicons: Arabic, Persian, Byzantine Greek, and Turkish, as 
he names here; Syriac, Old French, and Latin, as he states elsewhere. Tellingly, Amirdovlat‘ 
does not seem to think of these words as indigenous to the Armenian lexicon, but rather 
as terms that preserve their outsider status as part of the Middle Armenian lexicon. In 
other words, he is implicitly contrasting the Middle Armenian lexicon as a whole against 
its Classical Armenian counterpart (whose own manifold borrowings from other tongues 
were no longer considered foreign words by this time). In this light, Middle Armenian is 
therefore a language that contains the languages of the world within it, preserving, and not 
collapsing or erasing, multiple striations of cultural and linguistic difference.

108.  Amirdovlat‘ Amasiac‘i, Angitac‘ anpēt, 25.



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Amirdovlat‘ employs a deft play on words to stress this point. Referring to the multilingual 
lexicon contained in his Middle Armenian word book, he says simply “Thus, there are many 
words (baṙer) in this book, and it is in the vernacular (ašxarhabaṙ).” Here he offers the 
secondary spelling of the Armenian word for “vernacular,” which is traditionally written as 
ašxarhabar. The earliest uses of this latter spelling are adjectival, and they mean “worldly,” 
as opposed to the classical language grabar, the written or “bookly” language, perhaps 
referring to the earliest writings in grabar, which were translations of the Bible (and hence 
not “worldly”). Yet Amirdovlat‘ does not offer the traditional adjectival spelling of the 
word. Instead, he uses a homophonic pun made of two parts: ašxarh, meaning “world” and 
“country,” and baṙ, meaning “word” and “speech.” Therefore, when he says that “there are 
many words in this book (baṙer), and it is in ašxarhabaṙ,” he literally means that Middle 
Armenian (and by extension, his pharmacopeia) contains within it the “words of the world.” 
Or, as he more simply states in a poem at the end of his book,

I composed and completed any word that is [here], 
From [any] term of medicine as I found it.  
I completed this in five languages, which I studied,
From the Armenians, and from the Greeks, and from the Arabs,
and the Persians, and the Turks, and a little from the Latins.109

Middle Armenian may be a “vernacular” language, but it is thus in dialogue with far 
more than only its “classical” tongue. Rather, Middle Armenian looks to Arabic, Greek, 
Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Old French, Latin, and Classical Armenian for its lexicon; it brings 
together diverse bodies of knowledge, also culled from sources in disparate tongues; and 
moreover it does so in a manner that is contrasted against the philosophical tradition of 
“grammars” in Classical Armenian, the sacred language of the Bible. 

In this light, it is clear that Amirdovlat‘’s Middle Armenian is not simply (or exclusively) 
the spoken language of Armenian people in Constantinople. That is why he calls his book 
Useless for the Ignorant. “We made this book and verified it with many words and histories,” 
he writes, 

so that whoever reads it will understand easily, [but] the ignorant will not benefit from 
it. We named this book Useless for the Ignorant; I am indebted to scholars and am the 
servant of all philosophers. [Poem] 

Become a follower of wisdom; 
If you don’t study, you’re an ignorant physician!
Become learned, to these words be not indifferent, 
The name of this book is Useless for the Ignorant.110

Like the forms of Middle Armenian employed by physicians in Cilicia, this language is 
designed to aid one’s education, yet is still a language of the educated, “useless for the 
ignorant.” Plainly, it is a professionalized language of the elite, and it houses within itself 
a storehouse of learning culled across both the manuscript record (in many languages) 

109.  Amirdovlat‘ Amasiac‘i, Angitac‘ anpēt, 623.
110.  Amirdovlat‘ Amasiac‘i, Angitac‘ anpēt, 2. The use of poetry in medical works was also a common feature 

of the genre in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish at this time. 



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and the natural world. It is clear, long after Cilicia had fallen to the Mamluks, that Middle 
Armenian continued to attract speakers who expanded its cultural and linguistic boundaries 
to produce knowledge for an educated readership. 

Revealingly, Amirdovlat‘’s approach to transmitting knowledge in fifteenth-century 
Constantinople also conforms to a broader pattern. From a pedagogical perspective, he 
shares much with the language learning manuals housed at the palace library, beginning 
with his invocation of Meḥmed II and his form of address to students. MS Berlin, one of 
the Hexaglot Grammar’s sister codices that we discussed earlier, helps to make this plain. 
It is a product of the scriptorium of Meḥmed II and predates Amirdovlat‘’s Useless for the 
Ignorant by at least a decade. Its linguistic contents are somewhat different, however: 
this Dānistan is a grammar and dictionary of Greek, Latin, and medieval Serbian, with 
supplemental readings in Greek.

Still, it shares much in common with the pedagogy behind Useless for the Ignorant and 
the Hexaglot Grammar. The manual’s introduction declares Meḥmed II as the ruler of two 
great lands and two great seas, a collector of manuscripts and a learner of many tongues. 
Most importantly, it states that Meḥmed II was explicitly engaged in the labor of rendering 
bodies of knowledge, present in disparate languages, intelligible for students at court: 

He (Meḥmed II) has collected books in various languages and has [ordered] the 
preparation of documents to explain confusing phrases in those languages with his 
grace. With the help of this copy, the student may, on his own, joyfully enter a desert 
of words of ambiguous origins. The one who wishes [to learn a language] may on his 
own step in a garden of precise phrases and chapters with the agency of this [book]. 
And I have named it the Book of Appendices of the Dānistan in the Languages of Greek 
and Serbian.111

Like Amirdovlat‘’s Useless for the Ignorant, this too is a product of assemblage 
at the Ottoman court: the bringing together of many books in different tongues, 
an act that likewise has necessitated a corresponding form of language cultivation. As 
we have seen, Amirdovlat‘ undertakes this labor by expanding the lexicon of Middle 
Armenian to include vocabulary from most of the primary languages of interest to the 
Ottoman court. Moreover, he carefully explains where each of these terms originated 
from, marking his dictionary with an abbreviated mark, while expanding upon their 
meanings in his clear Middle Armenian style; he even promises to explain any difficult 
word in Armenian so that “the reader may understand with ease, and the student may 
study with ease, and that nothing at all remain hidden, but rather be apparent.”112 In 
contrast, the Greek-Latin-Serbian Dānistan undertakes its program of study not to 
expand the pharmacological lexicon of any single language, but rather to bring students 
with knowledge of Arabic and Persian closer into the orbit of “non-Islamic” languages, 
so that they may better understand the other books in the sultan’s library, in addition 
to the diverse traditions and bodies of knowledge of the many peoples of the empire.  
 

111.  See Staatsbibliothek, MS Berlin, shelf mark or. oct. 33, 5r–6r. 
112.  Amirdovlat‘ Amasiac‘i, Angitac‘ anpēt, 25.



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In all of these cases, these textbooks serve to draw the reader into greater fields of 
knowledge. In the Dānistan, this knowledge concerns Greek philosophy; in Useless for the 
Ignorant, the field of knowledge is primarily pharmacological, an area which was also of 
great interest to the Ottoman court, judging by the many medical works housed at the 
palace library. What clears the way for students of either text, and what binds together 
these manuals and the manuscript collections they evoke, is a form of linguistic labor: the 
programs of language study and cultivation that make knowledge production possible for 
sovereign and student alike. For both pharmacological and grammatical works, it is not 
coincidental that these forms of language study name Meḥmed II alongside other scholarly 
luminaries (see Figs. 12, 13). As Amirdovlat‘ and the Dānistan suggest, the cultivation of 
language and knowledge were intimately tied to the forms of power that produced them, in 
tandem, as part of a shared program of fashioning and performing erudition at court. 

Fig. 12. The Greek alphabet. 
Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS or. oct. 33, 343v. 
Photo courtesy of the Staatsbibliothek zu 

Berlin.

Fig. 13. The preface containing Meḥmed II’s 
name, highlighted in red ink. 

Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS or. oct. 33, 5r. 
Photo courtesy of the Staatsbibliothek zu 

Berlin.



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Conclusion: Vernacular Knowledge Across the Sea in the Middle

It is in this context that we return to Meḥmed II’s Hexaglot Grammar, which likewise 
houses within it the languages of the world, telling a collective story about Ottoman 
language ideology during a pivotal moment in the empire’s history. These are the languages 
of Mediterranean empires and kingdoms: Persian, Classical Greek, Byzantine Greek, Latin, 
Ottoman Turkish, and Middle Armenian. As we have shown in the case of Middle Armenian, 
and as scholars have demonstrated in numerous other contexts, these tongues were also 
significant languages of knowledge production around the Mediterranean world. Of course, 
this does not mean that each language held the same function or status as far as the Ottoman 
court was concerned. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Middle Armenian of the Hexaglot Grammar is quite similar 
to the “worldly speech” that Amirdovlat‘ uses in his medical word book in terms of its 
lexicon and grammar. Like Amirdovlat‘, the Hexaglot Grammar features a wide array of 
nouns for plants and animals that could have a number of possible applications, including 
pharmacology. So, too, does the Hexaglot cover a substantial number of terms for human 
anatomy. In a complementary vein, its verbs similarly concern the actions of everyday 
life. Here, too, it is possible to discern an overlap with the labor of physicians and 
pharmacologists, all those whose work required them to collect and to gather, to cut and to 
spread, to join and to separate, to knead and to boil, to melt and to cook, to measure and to 
purify, to sew and to study diverse materials. Of course, this is not the only application that 
such terms have; like language itself, the Hexaglot Grammar’s uses are open-ended. These 
same word sets, which are based on other language primers at court, would be fruitful for 
any language learner to memorize at the start of their education. At the same time, it is 
worth observing that a good many of these terms would not seem especially related to the 
communicative needs of the chancellery. Rather, they are words that are fixed in the sphere 
of daily life, rooted in the material world and its celestial analogues.

As we have seen, Middle Armenian was a language whose speakers in fifteenth-
century Constantinople were both aware of the high number of foreign loanwords in their 
vernacular language, and actively sought to augment additional medicinal, pharmacological, 
and botanical terms in their ongoing cultivation of this “worldly speech.” Amirdovlat‘ was 
hardly the only participant in this process. For example, a Middle Armenian-Arabic-Latin 
medical dictionary from the fifteenth century, housed by the Mekhitarist Armenian Catholic 
Congregation in Vienna (MS 310), likewise speaks to a specialized need to create legibility 
in the medical field across different languages in the Mediterranean.113 As in the earliest 
recorded days of Middle Armenian writing, it is clear that many of the incidental cultivators 
of Middle Armenian during this period were physicians, who cared for their patients in 
part by caring for the tongue they spoke. In the case of Amirdovlat‘, of course, this was not 
always done for purely scientific purposes. Instead, the cultivation of Middle Armenian as 
a medical language (and hence the production of medical knowledge at and adjacent to the 
court) also seems to have helped him to navigate, and make room for himself within, the 
nascent imperial enterprise of the Ottomans. 

113.  See the study by J. Karst, “Das trilingue Medizinalglossar aus Ms. 310 der Wiener Mechitharisten-
Bibliothek,” Zeitschrift für armenische Philologie (Marburg: Elwert, 1904), 2:112–48.



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Fig. 14. Beginning of the “Nouns” portion. Topkapı Palace Museum Library, MS A 2698, 33v. 
Photo courtesy of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library.



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Hence, we may consider the placement of Middle Armenian within the Hexaglot Grammar 
as more than merely additive; rather, it provides a visual heuristic for considering both 
the status of Middle Armenian at this moment in time and the Ottoman court’s language 
ideology before the imperial ascendancy of Ottoman Turkish. As Amirdovlat‘ implies, his 
language contains within it “the words of the world;” it is outwardly facing to meet the 
diverse lexicons that it folds back into itself. This interiority and exteriority of Amridovlat‘’s 
“worldly speech” is made legible by the Hexaglot Grammar in many ways. One is by Middle 
Armenian’s absorption of terms of Persian and Arabic origin, which in a few cases would be 
plain to readers who already knew Persian, as these loanwords appear not in the Armenian 
but rather the Perso-Arabic script.114 Such loanwords showcase some of the ways in which 
Middle Armenian domesticated the languages of state power and knowledge production in 
the Mediterranean, repurposing these words to be used by Armenian speakers, in Armenian-
language texts.

More important, what one might call the middle-ness of Middle Armenian is not merely 
interior. Middle Armenian is, quite literally, a language in the middle, as it was first 
generally cultivated in its written form by Cilician Armenians in dialogue especially with 
Outremer French, Greek, Arabic, Latin, and Persian—those other major languages of the 
Mediterranean, the “sea in the middle.” Middle Armenian took its literary and lexical cues 
from these languages in different ways, selectively borrowing terms and translating texts 
as a way of incorporating Armenian within broader cultural and epistemic ecosystems. 
The Hexaglot Grammar performatively brings these interconnections to the fore, as it 
gathers together Middle Armenian alongside the languages of knowledge production and 
state power both east and west of Cilicia itself (see Fig. 14). It implicitly acknowledges, 
in other words, that Middle Armenian is part of the linguistic landscape of the broader 
Mediterranean world, and moreover, that it was part of the language hierarchies, cultivated 
by the Ottoman court, which served both ideological purposes and pedagogical aims at the 
same time. Significantly, this language landscape overlaps with the linguistic terrain that 
Amirdovlat‘ covers in his various writings, as he too drew a nearly identical set of languages 
together to facilitate the development of medical and botanical knowledge, and, even more, 
knowledge that he often frames for use at court. 

We ought to expand this frame even further. In fact, the production of the Hexaglot 
Grammar corresponds to a period of the flourishing of the Armenian vernacular along the 
northern shores of the Mediterranean. Most notably, from 1512/13–1513/14, a mysterious 
figure known as Yakob Mełapart (Jacob the Sinful) published the first five books in 
Armenian, which he compiled from manuscripts in both Classical and Middle Armenian. 
It is unknown even if Yakob was Armenian. We only know that Yakob operated in the city 
of Venice, where print culture was thriving in many languages, witnessing the publication 

114.  Thus, in an entry with the Persian base verb َمزاح ْکردن, meaning “to joke,” the corresponding Armenian 
entry is written ََگْ�ــََگْل آْنیَــْْل , which calques the Middle Armenian verb anel (“to do”) with the Persian loanword 
gangal, meaning “jesting” or “joke.” The verb exists in Persian as ََگْ�ــََگْل ْکــردن, again meaning “to joke.” In other 
words, for a reader with knowledge of Persian, the Middle Armenian entry essentially gives a synonym, in 
Persian, for the Persian base entry. For a reader with knowledge of Persian, reading in the Arabo-Persian script, 
Middle Armenian’s use of this loanword and its interface with the Persian language would be extremely obvious. 



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of grammars of Greek or Latin. Still, despite these mysteries, the three most dominant 
themes in Yakob’s books should not surprise readers here: generally, these are texts of a 
religious, astrological, and/or medically adjacent nature, as in the case of prayers to heal 
the infirm. Similarly, though we do not know for whom these books were published, it is 
worth considering that in 1537–38, Paganino and Alessandro Paganini printed the Qur’an in 
Venice, for the first time in Arabic, likely to sell at Ottoman markets in Constantinople. It is 
not difficult to imagine that the earliest Armenian printed books, which also featured many 
texts in Middle Armenian, were likewise intended for a market where there was already 
interest in such subjects, especially among both Armenians and non-Armenians alike.115

Suggestively, when we correlate the language learning interests of the Ottoman court, 
grounded in the Hexaglot Grammar and its sibling codices, alongside the activities of other 
prominent Armenian figures elsewhere in the Mediterranean, the hazy outlines of many 
other untold histories begin to swim into view. Of course, this is not to say that the Ottoman 
court drove Middle Armenian knowledge production in other cities like Venice, Vienna, or 
Amasya. Rather, it is to observe that both the court and these other Armenian actors were 
caught up in a similar linguistic and epistemic fabric, one which was broadly arrayed across 
the eastern coastline of the Mediterranean Sea, even as each tugged at its hem differently.

What the combined portraits of our diptych collectively present, then, are different 
horizons of possibility for what the medieval Armenian vernacular could become and could 
do, post-Cilicia. Some of these possibilities were clearly glimpsed by the Ottoman court, 
which engaged in the hitherto unknown project of studying the Armenian vernacular 
through the production of different language-learning materials. Others were seen by 
Amirdovlat‘ of Amasya, who cultivated a professionalized language at once accessible and 
“useless for the ignorant” as he moved in and out of court. Still other possibilities were 
gleaned further abroad by Venetian printers like Yakob, who reproduced religious and 
astrological texts with vernacular leanings, or by the compilers of the Middle Armenian-
Arabic-Latin medical dictionary, which aimed to make other epistemes legible in the 
Armenian tongue. All of these conform to a moment in time in which the Armenian 
vernacular had survived the kingdom that first nurtured it in writing, and moreover, had 
gone on to live a life of its own, often eclipsing its Classical counterpart in certain fields of 
knowledge production and in its proximity to courtly power.

By fashioning this portrait of a language in fifteenth-century Constantinople, we similarly 
aim to suggest new possibilities for telling the history of the Armenian vernacular, an 
endeavor which has largely been undertaken by linguists until recently. As we have shown 
here, Middle Armenian was cultivated, more than once, on Mediterranean shores. It was a 
product not only of its contact with multiple other languages, but to a lesser extent, also of 
multiple courtly settings where the primary cosmopolitan and vernacular languages of the 
Mediterranean congregated, swapping knowledge and scripts with one another. And finally, 

115.  On the use of Middle Armenian in Yakob Mełapart’s fifth book, the Tałaran (Songbook), see Michael 
Pifer, “Reading Hakob Meghapart’s Songbook (Venice, 1513/14): On Middle Armenian and the First Printed 
Volume of Armenian Poetry,” Turcica 54 (2023): 287–324. On premodern Armenian book markets, see especially 
Sebouh David Aslanian, Early Modernity and Mobility: Port Cities and Printers across the Armenian Diaspora, 
1512-1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2023). 



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it was a language that thrived in places in the middle: between the decline of Byzantine 
Greek and the ascendancy of Ottoman Turkish; between the emergence of the Ottomans 
as an Anatolian principality to their transformation as a cross-continental empire; and, 
perhaps most of all, between moments of disaster for Armenians themselves. Thus, Middle 
Armenian was more than simply the rustic language of “the people” in Constantinople, 
yet it also occupied a different and more tenuous position in Ottoman language ideology 
than did many other scientific vernacular and cosmopolitan languages of the premodern 
Mediterranean. Better to call it a tongue of many peregrinations, traveling across diverse 
communities, bodies of knowledge, and alphabetic horizons, long after the Armenian court 
in Sis had ceased to exist. Better to call it, perhaps, a survivor’s cant. 

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank H. Erdem Çipa, Kevork Bardakjian, the audiences at the 
Mediterranean Seminar, particularly Sharon Kinoshita and Brian Catlos, and the audiences 
at the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Studies and the East of Byzantium workshop, 
especially Christina Maranci and Brandie Ratliff, for their valuable suggestions. We are also 
grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments.

Bibliography

Manuscripts

Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul, MS 20.
Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul, MS 26.
Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul, MS 43 (Old).
Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul, MS 248.
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Arménien MS 247. 
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Supplément Turc MS 693.
Mekhitarist Congregation, Vienna, MS 310. 
Millet Library, Istanbul, MS Feyzullah 1360.
Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, or. oct. 33. 
Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 2531.
Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 2596.
Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 2610.
Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 3204.
Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 3711.
Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 4749.
Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 4750.
Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 4757.
Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 4767.
Süleymaniye Library, MS Fatih 3536.
Süleymaniye Library, MS Lala Ismail 261. 



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———. “Evliya Chelebi on the Armenian Language of Sivas in 1650. Some Remarks.” Annual 
of Armenian Linguistics 5 (1984): 99–108.

———. “On the Early Development of Armenian Dialects.” In Proceedings of the Fifth 
International Conference on Armenian Linguistics, edited by Dora Sakayan, 93–118. 
Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1996.

———. “On the Early Development of Armenian Dialects II. The Monophthongization of Ay-.” 
Annual of Armenian Linguistics 20 (1999-2000): 1–26.

Winter, Werner. “Traces of Early Dialectal Diversity in Old Armenian.” In Ancient Indo-
European Dialects: Proceedings of the Conference on Indo-European Linguistics, edited 
by Henrik Birnbaum and Jaan Puhvel, 201–211. Berkeley: University of California Press, 
1966.

Xač‘ikyan, L. S., ed. ZhE dari hayeren jeṙagreri hišatakaranner. Masn erkrord: 1451–1480 t‘t‘. 
Yerevan: Haykakan SAṘ Gitut‘yunneri Akademiayi Hratarakčut‘yun, 1958.



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Appendix: Armenian Verbs and Selected Nouns of the Hexaglot Grammar 

To provide a sampling of the materials found in the Hexaglot Grammar, here we present 
the infinitives and a selection of nouns from its entries. These lists represent one of the 
most extensive premodern attempts to record and study the Middle Armenian lexicon. They 
are also remarkable for their open-ended scope. As noted in our companion article, this 
vocabulary would not appear to be narrowly limited to a single field or profession; rather, 
it includes a wide range of human activity. Our primary intention here is thus to provide 
the reader with a closer glimpse into the Hexaglot’s pedagogical content in Armenian; to 
showcase some of its Middle Armenian vocabulary in a more systematic fashion; and finally 
to preserve something of the scribe’s approach to writing Armenian words in the Arabo-
Persian script. We do not attempt to undertake a proper linguistic analysis, or to weigh 
in on matters of dialect and pronunciation, which we leave to more capable disciplinary 
hands. Instead, we present these entries in the same generalist spirit as the Hexaglot itself, 
sharing its aim of facilitating additional study in an open-ended manner.

To illustrate the extent of the Middle Armenian vocabulary present in the Hexaglot 
Grammar’s verbs, we have classified each entry as inherently part of the Classical Armenian 
or Middle Armenian lexicon. However, readers should note that written Middle Armenian 
also drew heavily from the Classical Armenian lexicon in a diglossic relationship. In other 
words, from the perspective of Middle Armenian, these lexicons are not mutually exclusive; 
the Hexaglot Grammar is, therefore, not “classicizing” the Armenian vernacular in its use of 
Classical Armenian verbs. Conversely, however, one would generally not expect a Classical 
Armenian text to make such heavy use of Middle Armenian verbs.

This appendix does not showcase the many conjugations of verbs contained within the 
Hexaglot Grammar; nor does it present the entirety of the Hexaglot’s even more extensive 
dictionary of nouns. It is also worth noting that unlike the verbs, the nouns in the Hexaglot 
more generally conform to the Classical Armenian lexicon. This may be in part because 
Middle Armenian texts frequently made use of loanwords of Persian and Turkish origin, 
which are already supplied here by their corresponding entries. Hence, it may be reasonable 
to suppose, at least in the context of the Hexaglot’s production, that its compilers were 
somewhat conscious of the difference between the Armenian lexicon and its more recent 
borrowings from other languages, as was Amirdovlat‘ in his own writings.

Finally, the scribe occasionally renders two words in Armenian as a single word in the 
Arabo-Persian script, perhaps suggesting that an Armenian speaker was dictating words 
aloud for him to record. Of course, for now, this is only a supposition. Future attempts to 
parse the pronunciation of Armenian words in Constantinople based on the Hexaglot may 
wish to consider the potential ambiguity of this factor, though one still senses that the 
scribe has a sharp ear, to say the least. In general, we render the reconstructed Armenian 
word according to its conventional Armenian spelling, except in cases where MA preserves 
an attested wordform that matches the Arabic spelling more closely, or as otherwise noted.

It seems appropriate to end these preliminary remarks by quoting from linguist Jos J. S. 
Weitenberg’s adept analysis of the Armenian glossary of Autun: “A more detailed study will 
certainly be worth the reward.”116

116.  Weitenberg, “Armenian Dialects and the Latin-Armenian Glossary of Autun,” 21.



316  •  Samet Budak & michael Pifer

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

Verbs 

Persian 
Base Word 

English 
Translation

Armenian 
Equivalent 
in Arabic 
Alphabet

English 
translation

Armenian 
Reconstructed

Classical 
Armenian 

(CA) or 
Middle 

Armenian 
(MA) 

1 دانسنت To know ِکِْْدَاَنْْل To know գիտնալ MA

2 ��ناخنت To know; to 
discern

ََحْْصِِقنَاْْل To 
understand

հասկնալ MA

3 امُوخنت To teach; to 
learn

اُُوْْصنِيْْل To learn ուսնիլ MA

4 خُوانْدن To read; to 
study

َقَُْرَاَتْْل To read; to 
study

կարդալ CA (to 
read) /MA 
(to study)

5 نُو�نت To write َِقُرَِیَْْل To write գրել CA

6 فُرمُودن To 
command, 
order

ِِهَُراَمْْل To 
command, 
order

հրամել MA

7 منُودن To show ِِچْْچنَيْْل To show ցցնել MA

8 آمْدن � To come َقَاْْل To come գալ CA

9 َْرفنت To go َِقنَاْْل To go գնալ CA

10 ُْرفنت To sweep آُْوِلَيْْل � To sweep աւլել MA

11 نشسنت To sit ِنْْصِتيْْل To sit նստիլ117 CA

12 ِبُرخاْسنت To rise; to 
stand

َقَْڭِْنيْْل To rise; to 
stop

կա[ն]գնիլ CA

13 ِبُردن To take; to 
carry off

داِنيْْل To take; to 
carry off

տանիլ CA

14 اُوْردن To bring َپَُْرَیَْْل To bring բերել CA

15 خُوْردن To eat ُاُوَدْْل To eat ուտել CA

16 ا�امیْدن To drink َمََخَْْل To drink խմել CA

17 نُو��يْدن To drink َمََخَْْل To drink խմել CA

117.  The Armenian letter տ (phonetically “t” in Classical Armenian pronunciation and “d” in modern 
Western Armenian pronunciation) is often rendered by the letter ت (“t”) in the Arabic script in the Hexaglot, 
though not always. Cf., for abundant examples, the selection of nouns below. The same is sometimes true 
of the letter բ (phonetically “b” in Classical Armenian pronunciation and “p” in modern Western), which is 
represented in different entries by the letters ب (“b”) and پ (“p”).



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18 لیس�يْدن To lick لَِزَِیَْْل To lick լեզել MA

19 خائيْدن To chew ََچامیَْْل To chew ծամել CA

20 فُرُو ِبُردن To swallow َِقْلُْنُوْْل To swallow կլնուլ CA

21 ِچش�يْدن To taste حَاْمَْدْس�َيْْل To taste համտեսել MA

22 گُواْرَیْدن To digest َماْْرْس�َيْْل To digest մարսել CA

23 بُوَیيْدن To smell خُُوْدُِوَْراْْل To smell; 
to inhale 
fragrance 
here and 
there

խոտուըրալ; 
attested MA 
forms are 
հոտուըրալ / 
հոտվրալ

MA

24 دَیْدن To see ُنُوْْل َدْس�ْ To see տեսնուլ MA

25 گِزَیْدن To bite; to 
sting

َخِْزِنيْْل To bite; to 
sting

խածն[ե]լ MA

26 �نیْدن To hear َيْْل لَس�ِ To hear լսել CA

27 گُرفنت To take; to 
catch

َِپُرِنَيْْل To take; to 
catch

բռնել CA

28 مِزاح کُردن To joke آنَْيْْل َڭَْنْڭَْل � To joke գանգալ անել MA, with 
gangal 
being a 
loan of New 
Persian 
origin

29 ُگِزَیْدن To choose َِهْنِْدِْرَیَْْل To choose ընտրել CA

30 بُوْس�يْدن To kiss َاَبَْقِنيْْل To kiss պագն[ե]լ MA

31 مکیْدن To suck ِِچیََچْْل To suck ծծել CA

32 خفنت To sleep نَْنِِجَيْْل؛ ِکُْنِْلنَْْل To sleep ննջել, քուն[ ]
ըլնալ118

CA (ննջել)/ 
MA (քուն 
ըլնալ)

33 نُوَیْدن To moan; to 
complain

َِقُْرِِتِنیْْل To lean; to 
lie; to rest

Scribal error; 
see entry 
below

34 غنُودن To sleep; to 
repose

َِقُْرِِتِنیْْل To lean; to 
lie; to rest

կռթն[ե]լ MA

118.  As happens many times in the Hexaglot, the two words in Armenian քուն ըլնալ are written as a single 
word in the Arabic script, perhaps suggesting that an Armenian speaker was dictating verbs aloud for a scribe to 
record. This possibility may also help to account occasionally for slight discrepancies in transliteration between 
different scripts.



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35 دْر �آغُوش 
کُردن

To embrace َِقُْرَڭَْْل To embrace գրկել CA/MA

36 نگُرْسنت To look َاَنَِیْْل؛ ِهَاَِیْْل To look նայիլ, հայիլ CA

37 َپُرُوْردن To nourish, 
foster

ِْصْنِْچنَيْْل To nourish, 
feed

սնցնել MA

38 پذيُرفنت To accept, 
receive

َانُْْدُونِيْْل To accept, 
receive

[ը]նտունիլ119 MA

39 کُردن To do نَْيْْل  آَ � To do անել MA

40 �ْدن To be; to 
become; to 
be doing

آِنيْْل؛ ِلنَاْْل � To do; to be անիլ, լինալ MA

41 بُودن To be; to 
become

آِنيْْل؛ ِلنَاْْل � To do; to be անիլ, լինալ MA

42 ماليْدن To rub, 
polish; to 
knead; to 
grind

مَاْْرِِچیَْْل To rub; to 
massage

մարձել MA

43 ماالنيْدن To make 
polish; to 
make knead

مَاْْرِِچیَْْل دَاْْل؛ 
آِِجُرَِیْْل دَاْْل �

To make 
massage; to 
make rub; to 
make wash 
with soap

մարձել տալ, 
աճռ[ե]լ տալ

MA

44 دُو��يْدن To milk َِقِِتَيْْل To milk կթել CA

45 دُو��يْده �ْدن To be milked َِقِتَاْن ِلِنَيْْل To be 
with milk, 
milkable

կթան լինել CA

46 لُرزَیْدن To tremble, 
shake

ِتُُوَغَاْْل To tremble, 
shake

դողալ CA

47 لغِزَیْدن To slip, slide, 
fall

َْصاِهيْْل؛ 
َِقِتَاِْهُرَِیَْْل

To slip; to 
trip, fall

սահիլ; 
քթահրել

CA/MA

48 گفنت To say, speak  ُخُوِْسْْل؛
آَِْصَيْْل �

To speak; to 
say

խօսիլ; 
ասել

CA

49 تُرْس�يْدن To fear َُواِخنَاْْل To fear վախենալ MA

50 تُرْسانيْدن To frighten َُواْخِْچِنيْْل To frighten վախցն[ե]լ MA

51 افِتادن To fall; to lie ِاـْڭْنِيْْل To fall ա[ն]կնիլ MA

119.  If we read this entry according to a Classical Armenian pronunciation, the Armenian reconstruction 
would simply be the CA ընդունիլ, with the Arabic letter د representing the Armenian դ.



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 Learning Middle Armenian at the Court of Meḥmed II  •  319

52 انْداخنت To throw; 
to scatter; 
to eject; to 
make

َيْْل َقَا��ِ To cast, 
throw; to 
strike; to 
extract; to 
last

քաշել MA

53 ُواخیْدن To beat or 
card cotton

پَْْمََبْْق َِقِْزَیَْْل To separate 
or divide 
cotton

բամպակ   
կի[ս]ել120

MA

54 َپهنان کُردن To conceal, 
abscond

َاَبِِهَيْْل To keep; to 
hide

պահել CA

55 افکنْدن To throw, 
cast

ِِچِقیَْْل To hurl; to 
shoot 

ձգել CA

56 هنادن To put, place ِِتِنیَْْل To put, place դնել CA

57 ِهشنت To put; to 
allow; to 
leave

پَاِْچُِتُوُغُوْْل To loose; to 
leave; to free

բաց[ ]թողուլ CA

58 گذ�نت To pass آَْچْنِنيْْل � To pass անցնիլ MA

59 َُوْر دا�نت To pick up; 
to carry off; 
to raise

َُوْْرِچِنَيْْل To raise; to 
pick up; to 
accept

վերցնել MA

60 ُْربُودن To rob, seize ِخِْلَيْْل To seize; to 
take away

խլել CA

61 َابْر دا�نت To be 
pregnant

َیَْتِِپُْرِنَيْْل To prohibit, 
impede121

ետ[ ]բռնել MA

62 فُرَیفنت To deceive َخاِپَيْْل To deceive, 
trick

խաբել CA

63 �سنت To wash ِلَُوَاَنْْل To wash; to 
bathe

լուանալ CA

64 پاک کُردن To purify ُْصُوْْرپَاَینَْْل To purify սուրբ[ ]այնել MA

65 پُو��يْدن To conceal; 
to cover

ََچاْزَڭَْْل To conceal; 
to cover

ծածկել122 CA

120.  Here the Arabic ز (“z”) is presumably used for the Armenian ս (“s”).
121.  Here the Armenian and Greek entries follow the Ottoman Turkish and not Persian. 
122.  Note here the different letters in Arabo-Persian used to render the letter ծ in the same word (unless one 

assumes a phonetic pronunciation of “dzazgel”).



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66 پُو�انيْدن To make 
cover; to 
clothe 
another

ََچاْزَگْْل دَاْْل  To make 
cover

ծածկել տալ MA

67  ]sic[ پِجيْدن To envelop; 
to twist

�ِيْْل پَاِت To be 
wrapped, 
enveloped

փաթթիլ MA

68 اْسُودن To rest, 
repose; 
to pacify,  
soothe

ِهَانِِْقِْچيْْل To rest, 
repose

հանգչիլ CA

69 آمیْدن اْر� To rest; to 
cause to be 
at rest

ِهَانِِْقِْچيْْل To rest, 
repose

հանգչիլ CA

70 اْرامانيْدن To cause to 
be quiet

ِهَانِِْقِْچِنَيْْل To make 
rest; to 
pacify

հանգցնել MA

71 ْسُوخنت To burn َاِْرَیْْل To burn ա[յ]րիլ CA

72 ْسُُوزانيْدن To set on fire َُواِْرَیْْل To set on fire վառ[ե]լ CA

73 افُرُوخنت To set on 
fire; to blaze, 
flame

پُُوِچنَاْْل To be 
burned; to 
flame

բոցնալ MA

74 زدن To strike, 
beat

زَاَیِنیْْل To strike, 
blow

զայն[ե]լ MA

75 کُوفنت To break; to 
beat

ِزِچیَْْل To beat [ծ]եծել CA

76 خس�ته �ْدن To be 
wounded; to 
fall sick

ِِهُِونِْْدَاَنْْل To fall sick հիւ[ա]նդ-
[ա]նալ123

CA [?]

77 ِبهیُوش �ْدن To faint, fall 
unconscious 

َخِْلَِقنْچِنْْل To lose 
consciousness

խելք[ ]անցնել MA

78 مُردن To die ِمْرْینِيْْل To die մեռնիլ MA

79 کشنت To kill �ِيْْل پَان ْس�ِ To kill սպանն[ե]լ124 MA

123.  This spelling conforms to CA; MA also preserves the forms հիւանտ and հիւընդութիւն, which may 
parallel the pronunciation of the Arabo-Persian spelling here. 

124.  Note here the use of the Arabo-Persian پ for the Armenian պ.



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80 زیسنت To live, to 
subsist

ُُوْخِْچنَاْْل To heal; 
to recover 
one’s health; 
to gain fresh 
vigor

ողջնալ125 MA

81 بسنت To bind َقَاِبَيْْل To bind կապել CA

82 گشادن To open پَاَاَنْْل To open բանալ CA

83 َابنگ زدن To exclaim; 
to cry out

َيْْل َقَاْچْنِ To exclaim; 
to cry out

կանչել CA

84 تْن زدن To rest خَاغُِوَیْْل To rest խաղուիլ MA

85 خامُوش �ْدن To be quiet خَاغُِوَیْْل To be quiet, 
tranquil

խաղուիլ MA

86 گامْرَیْدن To assign; to 
ascribe; to 
appoint; to 
smile

َچَانِِْقِِتيِنیْْل  [?]126

87 گُریسنت To weep اَلْْل To weep լալ CA

88 گُراینيْدن To make 
weep

اَلِْچِنَيْْل To make 
weep

լաց[ը]նել MA

89 خنْدَیْدن To laugh ِخنْْدَاْْل To laugh խնտալ127 MA

90 فُرْس�تادن To send ِغُْرَڭَْْل To send ղրկել MA

91 ْسِپُردن To entrust, 
give over

آِبْْصِِپُرَِیَْْل � To entrust, 
give over

ապսբրել MA

92 ِچسِپیْدن To adhere, 
stick

َِقْْپْچِيْْل To adhere, 
stick

կպչիլ MA

93 ِچس�پانيْدن To fasten, 
make stick

َِقْْپِْچِنَيْْل To fasten, 
make stick

կպցնել MA

94 فرشدن To squeeze, 
press

َقَاْمیَْْل To squeeze, 
press

քամել CA

125.  Here the Armenian entry would seem to follow the Ottoman Turkish. 
126.  Unable to reconstruct with confidence; the first portion of the verb may be the noun ցանկ “list.” 

The solution ցանկ[ ]դ[]ն[ե]լ, presumably “to list” or “to register,” has resonance with the Hexaglot’s other 
languages and with the corresponding entry in MS Berlin, yet it is unlikely that the Hexaglot would spell դնել 
differently than entry 56.

127.  Could alternatively be read as CA խնդալ.



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95 افُريْن گفنت To praise ِلامَْن َِهاُوِنيْْل To be totally 
pleased; 
to totally 
approve of

լման հաւնիլ MA

96 نفُريْن گفنت To curse آَاَبَُقُوُِوَیْْل � To blame, 
dispraise 

ապագով[ե]լ CA

97 جاَیيْدن To reside, 
take up an 
abode128

ِِچُْرَداَاَنْْل To urinate; 
see entry 
below

Possibly 
ջ[ու]ր[ ]
[թ]անալ 

CA

98 َچامیْدن To urinate ِِچُْرَداَاَنْْل To urinate Possibly 
ջ[ու]ր[ ] 
[թ]անալ

CA

99 افرسدن To freeze پَاْغِيْْل To freeze պաղիլ CA

100 مانسنت To resemble ِنامَِنيْْل To resemble նմանիլ CA

101 َابیسنت To be 
necessary

ِبِْدَاَنْْل To be 
necessary

պիտենալ MA

102  ]sic[ ایشنت� To suit, 
agree; to be 
necessary 

ْْژِنْڭِْْلِنيْْل آَ � To be 
worthy, 
valuable

աժնիկ[ ]
լին[ե]լ

MA

103 ِتُوانسنت To be 
powerful, 
able

ُاُوْْژُُوْْرَاَنْْل To become 
powerful

ուժուորնալ MA

104 ْرمیْدن To be 
liberated, 
freed

َخاِلْصِيْْل To be 
liberated, 
freed

խալըսիլ MA

105 ْرْسنت To be 
liberated; to 
escape

ِزْْرَزانِيْْل To be 
liberated, 
freed

զերծանիլ CA

106 ْرِهانيْدن To liberate; 
to rescue

َخاِلْصِيْْل دَاْْل To liberate, 
free

խալըսիլ տալ MA

107 ِبهیُوده گفنت To talk idly; 
to babble

ِِچُرُِخُوِْصْْل To speak 
nonsense, in 
vain

 [զ]ր[ա]-
խօսել129 

CA

108 َپمیُودن To measure ََچاِپَيْْل To measure չափել CA

128.  The Turkish equivalent in this entry mistakenly translates the Persian as “to urinate.” Other languages 
seem to have followed the Turkish translation.

129.  In this case, only the noun զրախօս is attested in CA. The entry may perhaps alternatively derive from 
ծռախօս “crooked speaker.” 



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

 Learning Middle Armenian at the Court of Meḥmed II  •  323

109 دْرَیْدن To rip َاَبْدِْرَیَْْل To rip, tear պատռել MA

110 ِبُرَیْدن To cut َِقْْدِْرَیَْْل To cut կտրել CA

111 َپژمْده �ْدن To wilt, fade ُُطُوْْرِمیْْل To wilt, fade թոռմիլ MA

112 دُوخنت To sew َقَاِْرَیَْْل To sew կարել CA

113 �کسنت To break َُقُودِْرَیَْْل To break կոտրել MA

114 ِتَباه �ْدن To be 
spoiled, 
ruined

آَُِوِْرَیْْل � To be 
spoiled, 
ruined

աւրիլ MA

115 گس�يخنت To break; to 
disconnect; 
to tear

َِقْْدِْرَیَْْل To cut; to 
separate

կտրել CA

116 کش�يْدن To draw, 
extract; to 
lead away

َيْْل َقَا��ِ To draw, 
extract; to 
lead away

քաշել CA

117 گُردَیْدن To turn; to 
walk about, 
go round

ِِچیْْل ْرِِصْ To walk 
about, go 
round

սրջիլ, perhaps 
a scribal error 
for շրջիլ

CA

118 گُردانيْدن To divert; to 
drive around

ِچَْچِنَيْْل ْرِِصْ To make 
walk; to 
make go 
around

սրջեցնել, 
perhaps a 
scribal error 
for շրջեցնել

MA

119 زُود ْرفنت To go swiftly ُ�ُوِتِِْقنَاْْل To go swiftly շուտ[ ]գնալ MA

120 ديُر امْدن To come late ُاُوْش َقَاْْل To come late ուշ գալ CA

121 خاْرَیْدن To scratch ِکَُْرَیَْْل To scratch քերել CA

122 خُرا��يْدن To scratch, 
scrape

َچَانِِْقُْرِِتَيْْل To scratch ճանկռտել MA

123 خِزَیْدن To creep; to 
crawl

ُْصُوَغَاْْل؛ َِقْْصُِوَیْْل To creep; to 
crawl; to be 
rubbed

սողալ; քսուիլ CA/MA

124 خْریگی کُردن To make 
treachery, act 
treacherously

َقَاُِچُوِِتینَاَیِنیْْل To do 
valorous 
acts, perform 
heroic 
deeds130 

քաջութի[ւ]ն[ ]
այն[ե]լ

MA

125 َیْدن َپُر� To fly ُِطُْرِِچیْْل To fly թռչիլ CA

130.  This is another example of the Hexaglot’s entries following Ottoman Turkish and not Persian. 



324  •  Samet Budak & michael Pifer

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

126 َپُرانيْدن To cause to 
fly

ُِطُْرِِچیَْْل To cause to 
fly

թռչել MA

127 َِجسنت To jump; to 
rise; to run 
away

ُاُوزَیَْْل To want; 
to wish; to 
request

ուզել CA/MA 
[NB: Here 
there is 
a scribal 
error 
confusing 
this entry 
with the 
following 
one]

128 ُِجسنت To search, 
inquire, ask 
for

َُواْزَیَْْل To run; to 
leap; to 
bound

վազել CA [See 
previous 
entry]

129 دْرایفنت To find out, 
perceive, 
understand

ِامیَاَاَنْْل To find out, 
perceive, 
understand

իմանալ CA

130 الفیْدن To boast, 
vaunt; to fail 
in keeping 
one’s 
promise

پَاْْرِزَاَنْْل To boast, 
vaunt; to be 
vain of

պարծենալ MA

131 مژده دادن To give good 
news

ُِوَیِْدَیَْْل آَ � To give good 
news

աւ[ե]տել MA

132 ایفنت To find َِقْْدنُُوْْل To find գտնուլ MA

133 َابفنت To weave, 
intertwine

َُقُوْْرِِچیَْْل To work, 
make, do; to 
knit; to twist 

գործել CA

134 ْریسنت To spin, 
twist

َماِنَيْْل To spin, 
twist; to 
weave

մանել CA

135 َاتفنت To twist; to 
bend; to heat

ُاُولُْرَِیَْْل To twist ոլրել MA

136 اْسا کش�يْدن To yawn ِِقَْداْْل َاِْرِجْْنِ To yawn երնճկտալ MA

137 عطسه زدن To sneeze َِپُرِنِِْقَْداْْل To sneeze փռնքտալ MA

138 فُرُوخنت To sell آِخیْْل َچ� To sell ծախ[ե]լ CA

139 خُرَیْدن To buy َِقنَْيْْل To buy գնել CA



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

 Learning Middle Armenian at the Court of Meḥmed II  •  325

140 ِخُرانيْدن To make 
purchase

َِقنَيْْل دَاْْل To make 
purchase

գնել տալ CA

141 ْس�تْدن To take, 
carry off

ْْرنُُوْْل آَ � To take, 
carry off

առնուլ CA

142 دادن To give دَاْْل To give տալ CA

143 ِبُر نشسنت To sit upon; 
to mount, 
ride

ِِچیَاُُوِْرْْل To mount, 
ride a horse

ձիաւորել / 
ձիավորել 

MA

144 آمْدن فُرُو � To descend ِاِْچنُُوْْل To descend իջնուլ MA

145 خُواْسنت To desire, 
want

اُُوْزَیَْْل To desire, 
want

ուզել MA

146 ْرخینت To pour, spill ُوَاِتَْيْْل To pour, spill վաթել MA

147 گُرخینت To flee, 
escape

پَاْخْچِيْْل To flee, 
escape

փախչիլ CA

148 گُريِزانيْدن To put to 
flight

پَاْخِزِِنَيْْل To put to 
flight

փախցնել MA

149 اْس�تادن To stand; to 
stop

َقَْڭِْنيْْل To rise; to 
stop

կա[ն]գնիլ CA

150 زائيْدن To give 
birth; to 
come forth, 
appear

ِاْنَِزِاَیْْل To be 
brought 
forth; to 
present 
oneself

ընծայիլ CA 

151 ُْرْسنت To grow; to 
spring

پُُوْْسِنیْْل To grow; to 
spring

բուսնիլ MA

152 ِچُرَیْدن To graze, 
pasture

ْْرِزَیَْْل آَ � To graze, 
pasture

արծ[ի]լ MA

153 ِجُرانيْدن To cause to 
graze

آَْْرَزْْل � To cause to 
graze

արծել MA

154 َابْرَیْدن To rain نِْزَْرُِوَیَْْل آَ � To rain անձրեւել CA

155 آَابدان کُردن � To build; 
to make 
habitable

َ�ْْن َقَْینَْْل To build; 
to make 
habitable

շէն կայնել131 MA

131.  Alternatively, perhaps շէն[]ք այնել.



326  •  Samet Budak & michael Pifer

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

156 جاُوَیْد �ْدن To become 
eternal, 
everlasting

آَخْْنَاخْْت � Immovable, 
stable, fixed 
(adjective)

անխախ[տ]132 MA

157 َانزَیْدن To put on a 
haughty air; 
to boast of 
oneself

نَاْْل ِکِْنُکُو��ْ To indulge 
oneself; to 
give oneself 
airs

քնքուշնալ 
(unattested 
word; CA is 
քնքշիլ)

MA

158 َابخنت To play; to 
lose

خَاَغَاْْل To play խաղալ CA

159 َابزَیْدن To play خَاَغَاْْل To play խաղալ CA

160 دُوَیْدن To run ُوَاْزُِوْْرَدْْل To jump, 
skip

վազվ[զ]տել MA

161 دُواَیْدن To make run ُوَاْزُِوْْرِدَِچنْيْْل To make 
jump, skip

վազվ[զ]-
տեցն[ե]լ

MA

162 َاتخنت To hasten, 
rush, run

ُوَاْزَیَْْل To run վազել CA

163 ْرْس�يْدن To arrive ِهَاْْسِنیْْل To arrive հասնիլ MA

164 مانْدن To remain ِمنَاْْل To remain մնալ CA

165 ْرِها کُردن To set free, 
quit, leave

ُطُُوغُُوْْل To set free, 
quit, leave

թողուլ CA

166 َانليْدن To groan; to 
lament

َِهِْزَیَْْل To groan; to 
lament

հեծել CA

167 زنُوَیْدن To howl ُاُوْْرَاَنْْل To howl ոռնալ CA

168 دْر امْدن To come in ِنیَْسَِقاْْل To come in նե[ր]ս[ ]գալ CA

169 آمْدن ِبُرُون � To come out ِتُُوَْسْلِْنَيْْل To go out դու[ր]ս[ ]ելնել MA

170 ا�اْرت کُردن To point; to 
give a sign; 
to allude; to 
inform by 
mute sign

ِامیَاِْچِنَيْْل To inform իմացնել MA

171 ِجنَبيْدن To move; to 
stir; to throb; 
to copulate

َْژاِْژَیْْل To move 
(intransitive)

ժաժիլ MA

172 ِجنَبانيْدن To move 
(transitive)

ْژَاْْژِِچِنَيْْل To move 
(transitive)

ժաժցնել MA

132.  One may also read this entry as անխաղթ, as the Arabic خ would also appear to signify the Armenian ղ 
in some cases. 



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

 Learning Middle Armenian at the Court of Meḥmed II  •  327

173 ِچکیْدن  To drip; to 
trickle

َقَاِِتيْْل To drip; to 
trickle

կաթիլ CA

174 ِجاکنيْدن   To make 
drip; to make 
trickle

نَيْْل َقََاِچْْتِ To make 
drip; to spill

կաթ[ե]ցնել MA

175 پنْدا�نت To think; to 
imagine; to 
consider; to 
understand

ِنُْرِِجیَْْل آَ � To dream; 
to fall into a 
revery

անրջել MA

176 َانگا�نت To suppose; 
to imagine

ِنُْرِِجیَْْل آَ � To dream; 
to fall into a 
revery

անրջել MA

177 کشنت To till; to 
reap; to mow

َِحُرِِچیْْل To be cleft, 
split, riven

հերձիլ MA

178 انْدُوِهگنی کُردن To grieve َیْنَْْل آَ ُْصُوَِقُُوْْر � To mourn, 
grieve

սուգուոր 
այնել

(irregular 
and 
unattested 
form; more 
commonly 
սգաւորիմ, 
to grieve)

179 پس�نْدَیْدن To approve; 
to like

حَاُْوِنيْْل To like հաւնիլ MA

180 ِبُُرازَیْدن To decorate; 
to befit

آَیِْْلَيْْل ُو� To enjoy; 
to befit; to 
possess

վայլել MA

181 بيخنت To sift مَاِغَيْْل To sift մաղել CA

182 پخنت To cook; to 
be cooked; to 
ripen

َاِپيْْل To be 
cooked; to 
ripen

[ե]փիլ CA (to be 
cooked)/
MA (to 
ripen)

183 َپِزَیْدن To cook; to 
be cooked; to 
pinch

َاپَْيْْل To cook [ե]փել CA

184 رس�نت To mix, 
knead

�َاْغُِوَیَْْل To mix, 
knead

շաղվել MA

185 ِجُو��يْدن To boil; to 
shoot forth

َاْرَاْْل To boil; to 
gush

[ե]ռալ CA



328  •  Samet Budak & michael Pifer

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

186 کُو��يْدن To try; to 
labor

َچَاَاَنْْل To try; to 
labor

ջանալ CA

187 ِتُواضع منُودن To be 
humbled,  
humble 
oneself

ُخُوَاَنْْرِِهيْْل To be 
humbled, 
humble 
oneself

խոնարհիլ CA

188 گذاخنت 
]گْداخنت[

To melt حَاِليْْل To melt հալիլ CA

189 گْدازانيْدن To melt 
(transitive)

حَاِلَيْْل  To melt 
(transitive)

հալել CA

190 امیخنت To mix, 
mingle 
(transitive 
and 
intransitive)

خَاْْرِنيْْل To mix, 
mingle 
(intransitive)

խառնիլ CA

191 �اکفنت To split; to 
cleave

ِِچْْخْلََکْ To split; to 
cleave

ճեղքել133 CA

192 اغشنت To moisten; 
to cut; to 
defile

No 
Armenian 

entry

193 انگیخنت To excite; to 
provoke; to 
tear; to pull 
off

پَْْدَیَْْل To pull or 
pluck out

փետել CA

194 ِبُرخُوْرداْر 
�ْدن

To succeed; 
to prosper

ِْرَزاَِقیَْْل To succeed; 
to prosper

[ը]ռզակել MA

195 مشُردن To reckon; to 
count

ُرَِیَْْل ْمََحْ To reckon; to 
count

համրել MA

196 ْساخنت To make; to 
build

ِ�ِنیَْْل To make; to 
build

շինել CA

197 پْریاْسنت To adorn; to 
decorate

No 
Armenian 

entry

198 آْراْسنت � To adorn; to 
decorate

َزاْْرَاَتِْرَیَْْل To adorn; to 
decorate

զարդարել CA

199 افُرَیْدن To create َتْغِْچَيْْل ِاْس�ْ To create ստեղծել MA

133.  Perhaps may be read as ջեխքել or չեխքել, though these are not attested forms. Cf. the footnote for 
entry 156.



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

 Learning Middle Armenian at the Court of Meḥmed II  •  329

200 مْریانيْدن To kill َپانَْيْْل ِاْس�ْ To kill սպանել MA

201 پيُونْدَیْدن To be joined, 
united

َِقِْچيْْل To be joined, 
united

կցիլ CA

202 جْدا کُردن To part; to 
divide

پَاْْژِنيْْل To be parted; 
to separate

բաժնիլ MA

203 خبش�يْدن To grant; 
to donate; 
to remit; to 
forgive; to 
pardon; to 
spare

اُُوْْژِدَیَْْل To endow; to 
give a dowry

օժտել MA

204 دْرخش�يْدن To shine; to 
glitter

ُپُوَغَاْْل ِپس�ْ To shine; to 
glitter

պսպողալ / 
պսպուղալ 
(unattested 
spellings of 
պսպղալ)134  

MA

205 ْسرتدن To shave آِِچیْلَْيْْل � To shave ածիլել MA

206 َغْلطانيْدن To roll َِقْلُُوْْرَیَْْل To roll գլորել CA

207 دمیْدن To blow ِپْْچَيْْل To blow փչել CA

208 دمانيْدن To make 
blow135

َِحِْزِچِنَيْْل To make ride 
[?]; to make 
cough [?]

հեծցնել [?]; 
հ[ա]զցնել [?]

MA

209 دزدَیْدن To steal َُقُوْغنَاْْل To steal գողնալ MA

210 �آُوخینت To hang; to 
suspend

َقَاْخِیَيْْل To hang; to 
suspend

կախ[ի]ել136 CA

211 ِبُر داْر کُردن To hang up ِجَْدَڭِْقَاْخِیيْْل To hang [by] 
the neck

ճ[ի]տն 
կախ[ե]լ 

MA

212 رشمیْدن To be 
ashamed

نَاْْل آِمش�ْ � To be 
ashamed

ամչնալ137 MA

213 فُرامُوش کُردن To forget مُُوْْرَاَنْْل To forget մոռնալ MA

214 ِچیْدن To gather ُْژُوْغَُوْْل To gather ժողվել MA

134.  Again, here the Perso-Arabic پ is seemingly used to represent the Armenian պ.
135.  The verb provided here is the causative of the previous verb. In the other languages, the verb stems do 

not change, but the Armenian option provided here has been altered from the previous entry. 
136.  It is unclear what the extra ի (“i”) is doing in this word; if it was not an error, perhaps the scribe 

intended to write the equivalent of կախեալ, “hung.” The same may is true for the following entry.
137.  Here the Arabic ش (“sh”) is seemingly used to represent the Armenian չ (“ch‘”).



330  •  Samet Budak & michael Pifer

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

215 نُوْردَیْدن To roll; to 
fold

َچَالَيْْل To roll; to 
fold

ծալել CA

216 نشانْدن To mark; to 
stamp

ِگْنْلََکْ To mark; to 
sign; to seal

կնքել CA

217 ُوزَیْدن To blow 
(intransitive)

ِهُُوفِْْپْچَيْْل To blow 
wind (i.e., 
“the wind 
blows”) 

հով[ ]փչել CA

218 گِزاْردن To quit; to 
leave; to pay

ُِوَجاَْرْْل To finish; to 
discharge; to 
pay

վճարել CA

219 ْرانْدن To drive; to 
drive out; to 
pursue

َيْْل ِکِش�ِ To chase; to 
drive out

քշել CA

220 اک�نت To turn 
earth; to 
sow, plough

آِنَيْْل َچ� To sow ցանել CA

221 دْرُوَیْدن To reap ِِهِزْْنَِیَْْل To reap հնձել CA

222 دامیْدن To winnow; 
to fan; to 
carry away; 
to appear; to 
uproot

َاَیِْنیَْْل To make; to 
do; to bring 
forth; to 
advance

այնել MA [This 
verb is 
often 
paired with 
a noun, 
which is 
absent 
here]

223 خذمْت کُردن To serve No 
Armenian 

entry

224 پْرُیُوز �ْدن To triumph; 
to be 
victorious

ُزُوَْراَُوْْر ِلنَاْْل To be 
valorous 

զօրաւ[ո]ր 
լինալ

MA

225 ْرمیْدن To be 
terrified

ِخُْرِِچیْْل To be 
terrified

խրչիլ MA

226 ْرمانيْدن To terrify ِخُرِچِنَيْْل To terrify խրչնել MA

227 َپُرْس�يْدن To ask ِهَاْْرِِچِنَيْْل To ask հարցնել MA



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

 Learning Middle Armenian at the Court of Meḥmed II  •  331

228 نُواخنت To soothe, 
caress; to 
praise; to 
play an 
instrument

ِکَْکُِوَیَْْل To caress; to 
flatter

գգուել CA

229 گنِجيْدن To be 
contained; to 
hold exactly; 
to be filled; 
to fit in138

َمْْݣِنْْل To separate, 
divide; to 
comment on; 
to interpret; 
to hold out 
or stretch 
forth [?]

մեկնել [?] CA

230 ْس�نِجيْدن To weigh; to 
measure

َِقرْشَِیَْْل To weigh; to 
measure

կշռել CA

231 ْس�نجانيْدن To have 
weighed; 
to make 
measure

اْْل َِقرْشَِیَدَْْلَ To have 
weighed; 
to make 
measure

կշռել[ ]տալ CA

232 انْدُوخنت To acquire, 
to collect; to 
pay a debt; 
to possess; to 
own

ِتِغْْل َُواْس�ْ To work; 
to gain, to 
acquire, to 
earn

վաստ[ա]կել CA

233 الُُودن To 
contaminate; 
to smear; to 
anoint

يْْل َاَتِخْْتِ To wet; to 
moisten

թաթխ[ե]լ MA

234 �ُُوْرَیْدن To revolt; to 
be driven to 
madness; to 
be frenzied

ِخُْوَاَنْْل To be driven 
to madness; 
to be 
frenzied

խեւնալ MA

235 پالُُودن To squeeze, 
strain; to 
filter; to 
purify; to 
become pure

َقَاِمیَْْل To squeeze, 
strain; to 
filter

քամել CA

138.  The compilers translated this verb into terms with slightly divergent meanings across the Hexaglot’s 
languages, ranging from “to fit in” to “to hold.” The Armenian entry may also reflect this relative ambiguity in 
relation to the Persian base word.



332  •  Samet Budak & michael Pifer

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

236 پا��يْدن To sprinkle, 
scatter

آِنَيْْل َچ� To sprinkle, 
scatter

ցանել CA

237 افشانْدن To disperse, 
scatter; to 
diffuse; to 
shed

ِتُُوِتِْفیْْل To shake թոթվ[ե]լ MA

238 اْراَیيْدن To adorn; to 
embellish 

َزاْْرَاَتِْرَیْْل To adorn; to 
embellish

զարդար[ե]լ CA

239 َپُرداخنت To finish, 
complete

َقَْدَاَْرْْل To finish, 
complete

կատարել CA

240 خُرامیْدن To walk 
gracefully, 
strut

َاَْرْرَاْْل To sway; to 
waddle; to 
fluctuate

[օ]ր[օ]րալ MA

241 ُطْریه �ْدن To be angry; 
to be bashful

پَاْْرَغَاَاَنْْل To be angry բարկանալ139 CA

242 رِساَیيْدن To sing; to 
chant

َيْْل خَاغَس�ْ To sing; 
to recite a 
poem

խաղ[ ]ասել MA

243 افِزُودن To add, 
increase

آَُولِْْچِنَيْْل � To add, 
increase

աւելցնել MA

244 ْس�تُودن To praise َقُُوُْوَیَْْل To praise գովել CA

245 اکْسنت To lessen, 
diminish

َاَبَْقَسْْچِنَيْْل To lessen, 
diminish

պակսեցնել MA

246 ْسُودن To anoint; to 
rub; to grind; 
to stroke; to 
besmear; to 
transfix

اُُوِزَیَْْل To anoint; to 
consecrate

օծել MA

247 خفه کُردن To strangle; 
to choke

َخْخِتَيْْل To strangle; 
to choke

խե[ղ]դել CA

248 انَبا�نت To fill لَنُُوْْل To fill լնուլ CA

249 آِکنْدن � To fill; to 
stuff, cram

َِقَُرْْل  [?] [?]

139.  Here the Armenian կ would seem to be rendered by the Arabic غ.



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

 Learning Middle Armenian at the Court of Meḥmed II  •  333

250 د��نام دادن To give a 
bad name; to 
vilify 

آِنُْرْلََکْ � To offend;  
to despise; 
to find fault 
with

ան[ա]րգել CA

251 �کفنت To be cleft; 
to open, 
expand (as a 
flower)

ََچاَِغْْک پَاِْچُِوْْل To open (as 
a flower); to 
bloom

ծաղիկ 
բացուիլ

MA

252 ْرِجْنيْدن To be sad, 
vexed; to 
be angry; 
to carve, 
engrave

لَِغنَاْْل To become 
embittered

լեղենալ MA

253 اماْس�يْدن To swell اُُوِْرَیْْل To swell ուռիլ MA

254 تُرکيْدن To make an 
excursion; 
to cleave; to 
crack

َجاُِطيْْل To be split; 
to be cleft

ճաթիլ MA

255 َپُرْستیْدن To worship; 
to adore

َاَبْ�ِتیَْْل To worship; 
to adore

պաշտել CA

256 ْرُُوزه دا�نت To fast َاَبَْقِپَُْرِنَيْْل To fast պաք[ ]բռնել MA

257 ُوضُو ْساخنت To perform 
ablution 

َِچُرَقِْلَُواَاَنْْل To wash 
one’s hands

ձեռք[ ]
լուանալ

CA

258 مناز گِزاْردن To say one’s 
prayers; 
to attend 
service

َاُغُوِْچْڭَنَاْْل To stand in 
prayer

աղօթս140[ ]
կենալ

MA

259 آمُرزَیْدن � To forgive; 
to pardon

ُاُغُوْْرِمیْْل To take 
pity or 
compassion 
on; to have 
mercy for

ողորմիլ CA

260 زاَیيْدن To give birth ِِچِنيْْل To give birth; 
to be born

ծնիլ MA

261 ��ناْر کُردن To swim لُُوَغَاْْل To swim լողալ CA

140.  Here the letter چ, generally used to render the letters ց (phonetically “ts‘”), ձ (“ts”), ծ (“dz”), appears 
to be used to render two letters, թս, again suggesting that the scribe was recording words supplied by a Middle 
Armenian speaker (rather than working from writing or from his own knowledge).



334  •  Samet Budak & michael Pifer

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

262 آزمُودن � To try پُُوْْرِِچیَْْل To try փորձել CA

263 پيَُوْسنت To join, bind, 
attach; to 
be joined, 
attached

َِقِْچيْْل To be joined, 
attached

կցիլ CA

264 ْسکزیَیْدن To jump, 
leap; to 
gallop; to be 
restive

َِحیَُواْْل To pant, 
puff, be 
breathless; 
to palpitate; 
to beat 
(heart)

հեւալ CA (to 
pant)/MA 
(to beat)

265 ْساکليْدن To think; 
to meditate 
mischief; to 
resolve to 
do harm; to 
deceive

َُواِخْْتُُوْْرِِهْْل To think bad 
thoughts; to 
resolve to do 
harm

վատ[ ]խորհիլ CA

266 گم کُردن To lose َُقُوْْرِْسِنیْْل To lose կորսն[ե]լ MA

267 پاَیيْدن To be 
constant, 
fixed; to 
guard; to 
look; to wait, 
expect

َیَْْل ِهَاْمْرََبْ To have 
patience; 
to endure; 
to remain 
constant, 
fixed

համբերել CA

268 اْرِزَیْدن To cost; to be 
worth

ْْژَیَْْل آَ � To cost; to be 
worth

աժել MA

269 ْسْلفیْدن To cough حَاَزاْْل To cough հազալ CA

270 تُرا��يْدن To shave; 
to pare; to 
scrape; to 
hew, cut

َيْْل ُطَا��ْ To hew; to 
plane; to 
smooth; to 
square

տաշել141 CA

271 ��تافنت To make 
haste

ََچاَاَنْْل To exert 
oneself; to 
endeavor; 
to hasten; to 
take pains

ջանալ CA

272 خِتنه کُردن To 
circumcise

ُِطْلَْپاِدَیَْْل To 
circumcise 

թլփատել CA

141.  Here the Arabic letter ط is seemingly used to render the Armenian տ.



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

 Learning Middle Armenian at the Court of Meḥmed II  •  335

273 ِبِزْرگُواْر �ْدن To become 
great, 
magnan-
imous, a 
learned man

ْْرَقَاِلنَْْل آَ � To become a 
king

արքայ լինալ MA

274 ِکنْدن To dig; to 
excavate

پُُوْْرَیَْْل To dig; to 
excavate

փորել CA

275 اکُوَیْدن To 
examine; to 
investigate; 
to search

َِهَْدُِوَیْْل To follow հետեւիլ142 MA

276 ْساَیيْدن To pulverize; 
to grind; to 
rub; to polish

َِقْسِفیْْل To be rubbed քս[ու]իլ MA

277 ْسفْليْدن To whistle No 
Armenian 

entry

278 ْس�تزیَیْدن To contend; 
to quarrel

ُرُُوِْسْْل ْمِِچْ [?] [?]

279 ُوْرزَیْدن To exercise, 
train, 
accustom 
(oneself)

ِِچیَُواَاَنْْل To conform; 
to take the 
form; to 
affect

Perhaps 
ձեւանալ

CA

280 گنْدَیْدن To stink; to 
putrefy

َُحُوِدْْل To stink, 
smell

հոտիլ CA

281 پُوْس�يْدن To rot, spoil ْْل پَط�ِ To rot, spoil փթթ[ի]լ MA

282 هنفنت To conceal, 
hide; to keep 
secret

َاَبِهَيْْل To preserve; 
to keep; to 
hide; to keep 
secret

պահել CA

283 ْسفنت To bore; to 
pierce

ََچاَݣَْْل To bore; to 
pierce

ծակել MA

284 دْرنگ کُردن To delay, 
protract

نَاْْل ُعُو��َ To be late ուշանալ MA

142.  The Greek and Armenian definitions agree here. 



336  •  Samet Budak & michael Pifer

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

285 زدُودن To wipe 
away; to 
remove; to 
polish; to 
clean; to 
pluck; to 
gather

ِنَيْْل ِبَْبُُوْجََغْ To refine; 
to soften; to 
render mild 
[?]

Unable to 
reconstruct 
with 
confidence; 
perhaps 
[փ]ա[փ]ու[կ]-
[ց]նել

MA

286 زداَیيْدن To have 
removed

ِبَْبُُوغَْْچِنَيْْل دَاْْل To have 
[someone] 
refine

փափուկցնել 
տալ [See 
previous 
entry]

287 انْدُودن To 
incrustate; 
to plaster, 
cover over; 
to anoint; to 
gild

ِِچْْچَيْْل To thrust 
down; to 
drive in; to 
plant; to set 
up

ցցել CA

288 پناِهيْدن To take 
refuge

ُعُوَْصنَاْْل To hope; to 
trust [in]; to 
rely; to take 
refuge

յուսանալ

289 َابُوْر کُردن To believe; 
to credit

ُْوَداْْل آَ � To believe աւտալ MA

290 بْلنْد �ْدن To be high; 
to be lifted

پَاْْرِْچُِرَاَنْْل To rise, 
ascend, go 
up

բարձրնալ MA

291 جخس�ته �ْدن To be happy; 
to be blessed

نَاَِهاَُوْر ِلنَْْل ِ�� To be 
fortunate, 
auspicious

շնահաւոր 
լինալ

MA

292 متام �ْدن To be 
completed

لََْمْنِْچنَيْْل To complete լմնցնել MA



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

 Learning Middle Armenian at the Court of Meḥmed II  •  337

Nouns (Selection) 

Persian 
Base 
Word

English 
Translation

Armenian 
Equivalent 
in Arabic 
Alphabet

English 
translation

Armenian 
Reconstructed

Classical 
Armenian 

(CA) or 
Middle 

Armenian 
(MA) 

1 
(34r)

اخرت Star آَْصْتخ � Star աստղ CA

2 ْس�ياْره Planet;  
wanderer

َچاََڭَاْن رِشْ Wanderer; 
change

շրջական CA

3 
(35r)

امُرُوز Today آْصُُوْْر � Today ասօր MA

4 فُردا Tomorrow ُوَاْْغ  Tomorrow վաղ CA

5 
(36r)

زمنی The earth; 
ground, 
soil

ِکَِْديْْن Ground, 
earth, soil

գետին CA

6 ْس�نگ Stone Stone اکَْْر քար CA

7 دْرای Sea Sea ِچُُوُْو ծով CA

8 
(37r)

�کُوفه Blossom Flower َچَاِغيْْک ծաղիկ CA

9 میُوه Fruit ک مْرِیْ Fruit միրգ CA

10 ْسیب Apple Apple ِخنْْچُُوْْر խնձոր CA

11 گنْدم Wheat Wheat ِچُُوَْرْن ցորէն/ցորեն MA

12 
(38v)

پُوْسْت Skin مُُوْْرِیِت Skin մորթի CA

13 رس Head Head َِقْلُُوْْخ գլուխ CA

14 اْس�تْخُوان Bone Bone اُُوْْصُِقَُوْْر ոսկոր MA

15 مغِز Brain Brain اَِیِغيْْغ ուղեղ CA

16 مُوی Hair Hair مَاْز մազ CA



338  •  Samet Budak & michael Pifer

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

17 بس�ياْر Many, 
numerous

 ,Many �َاْت
numerous

շատ CA

18 انْدک Few Few ِکِيْْچ քիչ CA

19 
(39r)

کَبُود Blue Blue اکَبُُوْت կապուտ MA [Could 
also be CA 
կապոյտ]

20 زْرد Yellow Yellow ِتَِغنْی դեղին CA

21 ْرُوی Face Face َاْریَْْس [ե]րես CA

22 ِچشم Eye آََچْْک � Eyes աչք CA

23 
(39v)

اِبُرُو Eyebrow اُُوْنْک Eyebrow յօնք CA

24 لب Lips ِِبُْرَڭُُوْنْک Lips պռկունք MA

25 زَابن Tongue Tongue لَِزُُو լեզու CA

26 پشْت Back Back َِقُرَاَنْْق կռնակ CA

27 انگشْت Finger Finger مَاْت մատ MA

28 
(40r)

ْسینه Chest َقُُوْْرِچْق Chest կուրծք CA

29 دْل Heart ِْسْرْیت Heart սիրտ CA

30 �مک Belly Belly پَُُوْْر փոր CA

31 ْرُوده Intestine آغِيْْک � Intestine աղիք CA

�ا�ه  32 Urine �ْرِیْ  Urine շեռ CA

33 زانُو Knee ِچُُوْنْک Knee ծունկ CA

34 
(42r)

مششْری Sword Sword ِتُُوْْر թուր CA

35 اکْرد Knife Knife ُطَاَاَنْک դանակ CA

36 ِکامن Bow آِغَيْْغ � Bow աղեղ MA

37 ِتْری Arrow Arrow ِنیَْْت նետ CA

38 �آِهْن Iron Iron ِاْْرَڭَاْت երկաթ CA



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024)

 Learning Middle Armenian at the Court of Meḥmed II  •  339

39  
(42v)

مْس Copper ِبِغْنْچ Copper պղինձ CA

40 رسب Lead آْرِِجیْْچ � Lead արճիճ CA/MA

41 ِهزیم Wood Wood پَاْت փատ MA [Could 
also be CA 
փայտ]

42 آْسْت م� Yogurt Yogurt مَازُُوْن մածուն CA

 43 
(43v)

زْر Gold Gold اُُوْْسکی ոսկի CA

44 ْس�می Silver آَْْرزَاْت � Silver արծաթ CA

45 
(44r)

اکْسه Bowl Bowl; dish ِبناَْک պնակ CA

46 
(45r)

اْسب Horse Horse َِچْه ձի CA

47 ا�رت Camel اُُوْغْت Camel ուղտ CA

48 ْساده گاُو Cow Cow َڭُُوُْو կով CA

49 خُر Donkey َاْش  Donkey էշ CA

50 
(46r)

ْسگ Dog �ُُوْن  Dog շուն CA

Select modern dictionaries consulted

Avetik‘ean, Fr. Gabriēl, Fr. Xač‘atur Siwrmēlean, and Fr. Mkrtič‘ Awgerean. Nor baṙgirk‘ 
haykazean lezui. 2 vols. Venice: Mekhitarist Press, 1836.

Dehkhoda, Ali Akbar, et al. Lughat-nāma. 

Hayyim, Sulayman. New Persian-English Dictionary. Tehran: Librairie-imprimerie Béroukhim, 
1934–36.

Łazaryan, Ṙuben and Henrik Avetisyan. Miǰin hayereni baṙaran. Yerevan: Erevani Petakan 
Hamalsarani Hratarakč‘ut‘yun, 2009.

Petrosean, M. Nor baṙgirk‘ hay-angliarēn. Venice: Mekhitarist Press, 1875.

Steingass, Francis Joseph. A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary, Including the Arabic 
Words and Phrases to Be Met with in Persian Literature. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 
1892.

https://dehkhoda.ut.ac.ir/en/dictionary