DIVAN, The, or privy council of the Sublime Porte, is presided over by the sadri-azam, grand vizier (porter), or minister of the interior, who communicates its deliberations to the sultan. It also contains the mufti, sheikh-ul-islam, chief of the ulema, also called principal of the court of cassation, and minister of justice and ecclesiastical affairs, whose fetva is nominally required for the firmans of the Government. Among other members we may mention the seraskier, or war-minister; the capudan pasha, or minister of marine; the foreign minister (called, until the reforms of Mahmoud, reis effendi); the grand terftardar, or finance minister; the mustechar, or assistant vizier, who comes in place of the ancient kiaya bey, abolished by Mahmoud; the tchiaous bashi, or intendant general of police; and the intendant of vakufs, or church-lands. The divan meets twice a week; on emergencies an Ajaik Divani, including the provincial pashas, the beys, aijams, and chief military officers, is summoned. On its advice in cases of popular tumult the sultan used to show himself at a window and promise reforms. But the word divan was applied by Turks, Persians, and Arabs to many kinds of assembly. Thus the Abbaside caliphs had a “Divan of Oppression,” which inquired into charges of tyranny against officers of state. A woman is said to have been president of this divan in the reign of Moctader, at the beginning of the 10th century. The Diwan-i-humayun was the imperial court of Persia; while in modern Turkey diwan-khane is any large room or hall in which people meet. Hence the word has been applied to the vizier, or head of the assembly; to the bags in which the judicial records of the kazi were kept; and to the court-hand in which the firmans were written. (See Freytag’s Lexicon ...Arabico- Latinum, ii. p. 37; De Sacy Gramm., i. p. 76.) It was also the name given by the East Indian Company in Bengal to the principal native officers under them. The origin of the word is not clear. One form of it, said to be connected with the adverb yj⅛ = below or inferior, has the meanings of the desert, the upper end of a chamber, anything on which one leans, a sofa formed in masonry, a pillow, a frame. Another form has the meanings of a list, a register of the several classes of officers and servants regulating the amount of royal gifts and salaries, in particular a muster-roll or military pay-book, an album or ledger, an almanack. (Lane’s Arabic Dictionary, ed. 1874, i. pp. 878-9.) It has been suggested by Fakhreddin Razi that the first of these meanings was really derived from the second; that in the reign of caliph Omar, a Persian marzban, or satrap, introduced a military pay-book, the Persian name of which (diwan) was transferred to a financial board, and subsequently to other boards and to the places where they met. One interesting application of the second meaning is to the selection of several poems by one author in the alphabetical order of the rhyming syllables; for instance, rhymes of the first class ending in 1 (Alif = A); of the second, in (Ba = B)i of the third, in GL· (Ta = T), and so on. The most important diwans are those of Ghassani, Sa’uti, and Zamrani among the Arabs; and of Hafiz, Saadi, and Jami among the Persians. The plan has been imitated by Goethe in his West-östlicher Divan (see the notes appended to voh iii. of the Stuttgart ed. of 1828), and Goethe was imitated by Rückert. A few meanings of the word divan remain which it is hard to reconcile, e.g., a game or dance of the magians, which consisted in turning round in a circle so as to imitate the motions of the heavenly bodies; the expression “by your leave,” used in entering a Turkish house where there may be unveiled women; a copper cooking pot wide at the bottom and contracted at the mouth. “Diwan durnak” is the Turkish army phrase for “order arms.” In modern Europe divan often means a café.
