ABSTRACT
The work of Ahmed-i Dai, translator, poet, scholar and court tutor, provides further exam ples. Dai is described in the literary histories not as a translator but as a poet and scholar, on the basis of his two collections of poetry in Arabic and Persian. But of his nine prose works in Turkish, all were translations except TeressUI (Copy-book for Writing), a guide to formal and informal correspondence, known as the first book on Turkish composition. Among his prose translations , the most important was the first Turkish version of the highly revered commentary on the QUR'AN by Ebu'l Leys-i Semerkandi, followed by an annotated transla tion of Ayet-ul kursi (the 256th verse of the second Sura of the Qur'lin) , which included a glossary, hagiographies, and morality tales of Dai's choice and composition. Others were translations of One Hundred Hadiths (holy sayings) of the Prophet Muhammed and Tibb-i nebevf (The Prophet's Medical Advice), a collection of his sayings on hygiene and dis ease. The last was a part-translation of Ebu Nairn Hafiz-i lsfahani's Kitabu' nifa fi ahadisi' I Mustafa (The Book of Remedies) , which itself was based on the Persian summary-version by Imam Ahmed b.Yusuf et Tifasi.
