Early Ottoman prose, before the 19th century CE, never developed to the extent that the contemporary Divan poetry did. A large part of the reason for this was that much prose of the time was expected to adhere to the rules of
seci, or
rhymed prose, a type of writing descended from Arabic literature (''
saj''') and which prescribed that between each adjective and noun in a sentence, there must be a
rhyme. Nevertheless, there was a long tradition of prose in the Ottoman Empire. This tradition was, for centuries, exclusively
nonfictional in nature—the
fiction tradition was limited to narrative poetry. A number of such nonfictional prose genres developed: • the
seyahâtnâme, or
travelogue, of which the outstanding example is the 17th-century
Seyahâtnâme of
Evliya Çelebi • the
sefâretnâme, a related genre that is a sort of travelogue of the journeys and experiences of an Ottoman
ambassador, and which is best exemplified by the 1718–1720
Paris Sefâretnâmesi of
Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi Efendi, ambassador to the court of
Louis XV of France • the
siyâsetnâme, a kind of political treatise describing the functionings of state and offering advice for rulers, an early Seljuk example of which is the 11th-century
Siyāsatnāma, written in Persian by
Nizam al-Mulk,
vizier to the Seljuk rulers
Alp Arslan and
Malik Shah I • the
tezkire, a collection of short
biographies of notable figures, some of the most notable of which were the 16th-century ''tezkiretü'ş-şuara''s, or biographies of poets, by
Latîfî and
Aşık Çelebi • the
münşeât, a collection of writings and letters similar to the Western tradition of
belles-lettres • the
münazara, a collection of
debates of either a religious or a philosophical nature ==Later Ottoman prose==