# Zenanname

The Zennanname (pronounced, Ottoman Turkish: زناننامه, lit. 'Book of Women') is a long form poem by Enderûnlu Fâzıl, completed in 1793. It categorizes and describes the positive and negative attributes of women from across the Ottoman Empire and the world according to their places of origin, in a masnavi form long poem in the Ottoman Dîvân tradition. The Zenanname is a sequel to the Hubanname (1792-3), an equivalent work on young men by the same author. Both works are in the şehrengiz (lit. 'city-mover' or 'city-exciter') style of the masnavi, a typology of poems describing the beauties of a city.
The work was translated into various European languages in the late 19th century, beginning with Jean-Adolphe Decourdemanche's 1879 French translation as the Livre des Femmes. E. J. W. Gibb, among the first and most notable translators of Ottoman poetry into English, included verses from the Zennanname in his extensive six-volume survey, A History of Ottoman Poetry. One such translation is as follows:
   O thou, whose dusky mole is Hindustan, Whose tresses are the realms of Frankistan! The English woman is most sweet of face, Sweet-voiced, sweet-fashioned, and fulfilled of grace. Her red cheek to the rose doth colour bring, Her mouth doth teach the nightingale to sing. They all are pure of spirit and of heart; And prone are they unto adornment’s art. What all this pomp of splendor of array! What all this pageantry their heads display! Her hidden treasure’s talisman is broke, Undone, or ever it receiveth stroke.

## Reception
### Scholarly discussion

İrvin Cemil Schick identifies a common strain among şehrengiz poems in that an overwhelming number of them describe male beauties, and highlights the Zenanname as a rare example of the description of beautiful women. He partially attributes this imbalance to the gendered division of Ottoman society. Indeed, the work is characterized by Michael Erdman as "exceptionally misogynist at times," and Fâzıl's own preface to the Zenanname delinates the work as having been written on commission to his male lover, reluctantly and "without conviction." In this preface, Fâzıl further identifies himself as having "no inclination towards women".

### 19th Century reception

E. J. W. Gibb, who characterized the Zenanname as the "ultimate outcome of the Shehr-engiz," despite his characterization of Fâzıl as "no true poet" writes of his marked success in the individuality and originality of his work.
Jean-Adolphe Decourdemanche, in his introduction to the 1879 French translation, writes that the Zenanname was considered Fâzıl's masterpiece and the best-known of his works. He also emphasizes that his motivation to translate the Zenanname above numerous other and occasionally more significant works of Ottoman poetry arose from the orientalist interest in women and harems in the Ottoman realm.
Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, a prominent orientalist and historian of the Ottoman Empire, compared the work to Ovid's Ars Amatoria in his History of Ottoman Poetry.
Murat Bardakçı writes that the book, when first printed in book form in 1837, was banned in the Ottoman Empire, purportedly due to its opposition to the institution of marriage.

## Manuscripts

Extant illuminated manuscripts of the Zenanname, featuring miniatures of women, are housed in the Köprülü Library (34 Ma 422/4), Istanbul Millet Library (34 Ae Manzum 1061/3 and 1062/2), British Library (Or 7094; formerly in the collection of E. J. W. Gibb), and Princeton University Library (Islamic Manuscripts, Third Series no. 277).