Ferec Baʿde’ş-Şidde - Arabic Version

The stories known as Ferec Ba'd eş-Şidde (FBŞ) are among the most important prose works of the early Ottoman period. The Turkish FBŞ consists of 42 stories in the style of One Thousand and One Nights (1001 gece masalları). The Budapest manuscript, in which Hazai-Tietze published their transcribed text, is the oldest known copy (1451) of the Turkish FBŞ, of which there are many copies in libraries in Türkiye and abroad.

Ferec Ba'd eş-Şidde is not a title given to different versions of a specific work, but rather the name of a story genre in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literature that depicts the joy and peace attained after sorrow. The protagonists of these stories are invariably noble and wealthy individuals; while their lives proceed in their normal course, they find themselves caught up in extraordinary events for various reasons and are forced to struggle against countless hardships; however, every story invariably ends with a “happy ending,” and the protagonists spend the rest of their lives in happiness.