Among the various literatures of the Ottoman Empire, Dimitrie Cantemir’s allegorical novel Istoria ieroglifică stands out as one of the rare examples of non-Turkish literature that would even correspond to the modern understanding of the term. While secular literature primarily consisted of chronicles, translations and copies of antique or Byzantine writings as well as popular narratives (fables and stories often based on Biblical Apocrypha) in hand-written miscellanies, most of the textual genres we are used to thinking of when speaking of literature in the sense of belles-lettres were entirely missing until the late 18th century. Hence the solitary position occupied by the Dimitrie Cantemir’s baroque roman à clef with no precursors or successors.
