 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.