How and Why Was Slavic Learned at The Ottoman Court? Insights from the Fifteenth-Century Projects Dedicated to Learning Languages of the World

This paper addresses the question of the status of Slavic/Serbian language in the Ottoman Empire during the late 15th century by focusing on three multilingual language learning handbooks, which were produced at or around the Ottoman court and contain fragments in Serbian written in the Arabic script. Two of these handbooks (MSs Süleymaniye Ayasofya 4749 and Ayasofya 4750) have attracted scholarly attention since 1936. Using the historical language ideology as a hermeneutical tool, this paper first revisits the scholarly interpretations of these two manuscripts and then introduces a third, so far unnoticed codex (MS SB Berlin Or.oct.33). The analysis of the form and contents of this manuscript provides new insights into the original context in which all three manuscripts were produced, along with a series of similar handbooks which do not contain Slavic material.