The Sebk-i Hindi (Indian Style) describes a literary movement with roots in the great Iranian poets of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, such as Hafiz-i Shirazi, Husrev-i Dihlevi, Sa?di and Molla Jami. It was later developed by poets who left Iran fleeing the oppressive Safavid regime and sought freedom in the court of the Moguls in India. The Sebk-i Hindi was known for its complexity, creativity, and intense focus on fresh and new themes and metaphors. The Sebk-i Hindi poets are said to have plundered dictionaries to find archaic words never before used in poetry often making their poems accessible only to those patient enough to solve their complicated puzzles. From the seventeenth century on, the Ottoman Turkish version of the Sebk-i Hindi style enjoyed great popularity. In the seventeenth century, such famous poets as Nef?i, Na’ili, Neshati, Fehim, Shehri, Vecdi, and Nabi were known as adherents to the Indian Style. Perhaps the most innovative and celebrated poets of the 18th century, Nedim and Sheyh Galib, were also strongly influenced by the Sebk-i Hindi. However, these poets, despite their success and reputations as the greatest of the Ottoman poets, could not escape the accusation that they were blindly imitating Persian poets, an accusation that ultimately devalues some of the best Ottoman poetry. This paper aims to explore to what degree the Ottoman Sebk-i Hindi poets, who often referred to canonical Persian poets in their poems, actually “imitated” or “copied” their Persian counterparts. In addition, the paper will also analyze the stories about these Ottoman poets told in the tezkires (biographical dictionaries) to demonstrate the contemporary view that these poets employed Sebk-i Hindi style sorrow and imagery in their poetry not because they were simply imitating the Persian Sebk-i Hindi poets, but rather, because the Sebk-i Hindi itself opened up to them creative avenues of expression for dealing with the very private emotions of sorrow and loneliness. Thus, I will argue that it was not a slavish devotion to Persian poetry but the modes of the Sebk-i Hindi style which appealed to the Ottoman poets by providing them a means to articulate their misery and conceal it in linguistic mystery from “outsiders”.