Öz
This article focuses on Kâtip Ali Efendi’s pandnama (book of advice) and its comparison with similar works. Following the inquiries made regarding the identity of Kâtip Ali Efendi, who is presumed to have been alive in the late XVIth century and/or XVIIth century, his work Pandnama has been analyzed in terms of form and content. This concise prose work, written in a simple style, has two striking features. The first is that it consists entirely of quotes. These quotations are excerpted from the sayings of people belonging to various groups such as prophets, the Twelve Imams, Sufis, philosophers, scholars, and statesmen. The second is that the work bases on number four, in other words, the compiled advice always consists of four elements. In the article, I have discoursed what the number four symbolizes and why this number might be preferred in a pandnama. Moreover, I have compared Kâtip Ali Efendi’s work with Abdulkerim b. Mehmed’s work Nasâyihu'l-Ebrâr and Nasuh Nevâlî’s work Çeşme-i Hayât, which are both prosaic books of advice based on the number four and written in the XVIth century. After revealing the correlation between these works, I have transcribed Kâtip Ali Efendi’s work into the Latin alphabet.