Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fâilâtün mefâilün fe'ilün (Hüsameddin gives no metre; it has been read from the lines)

Uğradım bir kazâ-yı mübreme âh
Oldu Amid bana belâ-yı siyâh

In English

1. Alas, I have met an unalterable fate, a judgeship already sealed; Amid (Diyarbekir) has become a black calamity for me.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Fate and Judgeship

The word "kazâ" does two jobs at once in this couplet. It means both the fulfilment of God's decree, that is, fate, and the office of a judge (kadı) and the district under his authority. "Kazâ-yı mübrem", in the language of theology, is fate that has been sealed and cannot be turned back. When Abdülhay says "I have met an inescapable kazâ", the reader first thinks he is speaking of a disaster; once the event Hüsameddin relates is known, the word's second sense emerges: the sultan has appointed him judge of Diyarbekir, and this decision too is as unalterable as fate. Working a word's near and far meanings together like this is what the rhetoricians call tevriye.

The second line names the place. "Amid" is the name Diyarbekir bore in earlier times; because of the dark stone of its city walls the city is also called "Kara Amid", Black Amid. "Belâ-yı siyâh", black calamity, therefore carries both the weight of the misfortune that has befallen him and the city's familiar epithet. Abdülhay names Amid by its name but gives its epithet to the calamity; because the city is black, the calamity has become black. The rhyme falls between "âh" and "siyâh"; the sigh at the end of the first line turns into the colour of the city in the second.

The Day It Was Spoken

According to Hüsameddin, in 937 (1530-31) Abdülhay resigned the judgeship of Amasya, went to Istanbul and withdrew into seclusion in the lodge of his uncle Sheikh Abdürrahîm Efendi. Angered by the resignation, Süleyman the Magnificent sent him to Diyarbekir as judge. Abdülhay spoke the couplet on this appointment and "left saying it". Diyarbekir was no strange place to him: after the city's conquest in 923 he had served there as judge with the title "kazasker of Kurdistan" and left by resigning in 928. The complaint in the couplet is therefore the voice of someone who knows the weight of the place and does not want to go back. The source does not put it this way; the interpretation comes from setting the couplet beside the entry.

In the entry the date of the appointment is written as "840". Since Süleyman came to the throne in 926 and the event took place after the resignation of 937, this figure must be a slip of the pen or a printing error; the likeliest correction is 940 (1533-34). According to the entry on Abdülazîz Efendi-Ümm-i Veledzâde in the same volume, Abdülhay was dismissed from the Amasya judgeship in Rebiülevvel 941 because of a disturbance in Amasya at the end of 940, and sent to Istanbul; the sultan's anger may also be connected with this event, but the source does not say so. Abdülhay's second petition softened the sultan, and in 943 (1536-37) he was released from the judgeship and returned to Amasya.

Attribution

The couplet appears only in Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi, within the account of the event and without a source. It should also be kept in mind that Hüsameddin does not describe Abdülhay as a poet and quotes no other poem of his. Whether the couplet is Abdülhay's own words or a saying fitted to his situation that passed from mouth to mouth cannot be settled by this single record. Hüsameddin's account gives it to Abdülhay, and that account is followed here. Abdülhay's life between Diyarbekir and Amasya is told in his own biography, and his father's in Abdülkerîm Efendi.

Bibliography

Online sources