The story of Sîrat Antar, created around the life of Antar ibn Shaddad, who is known as the poet of al-Mu‘allaqât and who is also famous for his heroism, had been circulating from language to language for centuries in different geographies. This story, which found existence in the tradition of oral literature in Arab geography in the 6th century, when Anter bin Şeddâd lived, was put into writing in the 12th century, and the whole story was translated into Turkish for the first time in 1477 by the order of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror. The preface of the translation of Qıssa-i Antar, whose translator is unknown, has the distinction of being the first translation criticism in Turkish in the light of the available information. According to the information the translator gave in the preface, as mentioned earlier, the story was translated into Turkish before it. However, it has been determined that these translations have deficiencies in many issues listed under different headings. The preface, as mentioned earlier, is the subject of this study. First of all, in the study, the translated text and intralingual translation of the preface of the first volume of Qıssa-i Antar registered with the location number H. 1145 in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library, are given. After the section in which the translation process described in the foreword is explained in articles, the Arabic and Turkish sources that the translator has benefited from and criticized have been reached. Based on the traces in the detected copies, the factual data of the translator’s criticisms of the previous translation were extracted, and the relevant data were interpreted. In the resulting table, it was concluded that there might be more than one translator whose name is unknown in the translation of Qıssa-i Antar, and the translator's identity and the text’s period were evaluated. In the last part, the numerical data of the copies examined by the translator and the translation produced during the translation process were transferred, and it was questioned why the translation was called “Kitâb-ı Fâhir” (the book to be proud of).
Copy, Atûfî, Kadı Darîr, Topkapı Palace Museum Library