Copper plate mystery

This inscription was sent in by a visitor to Omniglot and appears on a copper plate he bought in Turkey.

Original inscription on copper plate

Original inscription on copper plate

Can any of you decipher the text?

Comments (7)

GAugust 20th, 2010 at 9:55 pm

That seems a lot like Urdu –

The second word would be “ilaj” or “cure)

The first word on the second line seems to be “jo” (who/which),

- I’ve only had a semester of Urdu (but am fluent in Hindi) so the rest seems difficult but it defintely seems like it’s written in an earlier form of Nastaliq.

TJAugust 21st, 2010 at 1:33 am

Well its hardly legible, but anyway I can tell the language is not Arabic here. I see names. Mainly 2 names.
Al-Haj Saleh (Al-Haj is a title given to people who performed pilgrimage, specially elders). The other name is Al-Haj Ibrahim Agha.

The language can be Farsi, Urdu I suppose.

TJAugust 21st, 2010 at 8:26 am

ah sorry just noticed now that you mentioned it is from Turkey.
Yes, makes sense now a bit. The language is Ottoman Turkish I guess. And the two names would be: Al-Haj Saleh Pasha, and Al-Haj Ibrahim Agha.
Pasha and Agha are typical nobility rank titles in the Ottoman times.

But it’s extremely hard to read.

AndrewAugust 21st, 2010 at 1:00 pm

Yup, pretty sure that’s Ottoman Turkish. I’m not that fluent in it and it is quite hard to read, though. Sorry.

TJAugust 21st, 2010 at 11:51 pm

by the way i think the lowest most part of the plate is a date … i think it is 1237 … of course A.H.

TJAugust 22nd, 2010 at 11:20 am

New word recognized: second line in the middle, the word “Zadeh” (or Zade I think in modern Turkish) meaning “son” or “son of”.

He MidongSeptember 11th, 2010 at 3:20 am

It’s Ottoman Turkish indeed. I asked an Iranian Azeri friend who is familiar both with Perso-Arabic script and Turkish language. He could read it easily. Here is what he answered:

Arabic script:
مغازه الحاج صالح پاشا کتخداسی
جوته لی زاده الحاج ابراهیم آغا
1237

Modern Turkish script:
Mağaze El-hâc Salih Paşa Kethüdası
Cüteli-zade El-hâc İbrahim Ağa
1237 should be lunar Hijri year. 1431 now. So the thing ages only 6 lunar Hijri years and 7 solar years less than two centuries.

The meaning is not much but a name.
“The shop of El-hâc Salih Paşa Kethüdası
Cüteli-zade El-hâc İbrahim Ağa”