‘Beholding the orbit of the beloved’s face within the chain of locks / One sees embodied the absurdity of infinite regress and vicious circularity alike’: The Convergence of Theologico-Philosophical Referencing and Poetic Subjecthood Among the Early Ottoman Learned Elite

This article examines a handful of extant lyrical fragments in Turkish composed by fifteenth-century Ottoman medrese professors who were not primarily known as poets but as scholars producing works in Arabic on ḥikma (Avicennan philosophy) and kalam (philosophical theology). In these instances, poetic subjecthood was articulated through intricate interplays of theologico-philosophical allusion that linked poetic utterance to medrese scholarship and the authors’ identities as members of the learned elite, making such fragments vehicles for layered meanings reflecting their intellectual concerns. Building on a meclis-centered approach to literary contextualization, the study situates these fragments within the doctrinal frameworks of postclassical medreses to show how Ottoman scholars engaged ḥikma and kalām in didactic forms of poetic expression. In doing so, it moves beyond the prevailing emphasis on generic Neoplatonic imagery in Ottoman lyric poetry, instead highlighting explicit scientific references in extant lyrics on scholarship, love, and social critique, and considering their implications for the interplay between literary tradition, intellectual innovation, and poetic subjecthood.