Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Muḥtesib ‘āşıḳları mest olıcaḳ ta‘ẕīr ider
Mes’ele budur ki ‘āşıḳlar anı tekfīr ider
Ehl-i tezvīr ile ḳalb elinde olur pāy-māl
Milk-i dil çün zülfüñ ile ḳaşlaruñ el bir ider
Ẓulmi kim şāh eyleye kim virür anuñ dādını
Ḫānei mi‘mār yıḳsa anı kim ta‘mīr ider
Ġam çerisiyle muḳābil olmaġa ‘āşıḳlaruñ
Ḳāmetin ḳılup keman āhını aña tīr ider
Göñli milkin ‘Adli'nüñ ġam leşkeri yaḳmaḳ diler
Hey meded erkān-ı devlet aña ne tedbīr ider

In English

1. The muhtesib (the officer who supervised the market and public morals) punishes lovers when they get drunk; the question is this: the lovers in turn declare him an unbeliever. ("Mesele", question, is put here like a question of Islamic law.)

2. Because your curls and your brows have joined hands, the realm of the heart is trampled underfoot by deceivers, in the hands of counterfeiters. (Kalb means both "heart" and "counterfeit, false coin"; curls and brows are imagined as two swindlers who seize the realm of the heart.)

3. Who will give redress for the wrong a king commits, who will avenge it? If the architect pulls the house down, who will rebuild it? (The first line is missing in M2; OR and T read "vire" in place of "virür".)

4. To face the army of sorrow, lovers make a bow of their stature and an arrow of their sighs for that bow. (The figure bent by sorrow is likened to a bow, the sigh rising to the sky to an arrow. T reads "kâmetüñ", "your stature", in place of "kâmetin".)

5. The army of sorrow wants to burn the realm of Adlî's heart; help, O pillars of the state, what measures will you take against it? (OR reads "kim" in place of "ne": who will take measures against it?)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets. It is written in the remel pattern "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". The redif (refrain word) is "ider" (does, makes), and the rhyme is the sound "-îr/-ir": ta‘zîr, tekfîr, bir, ta‘mîr, tîr, tedbîr. The ghazal is found in the OR, T, M1 and M2 manuscripts and not in İBB. According to Yavuz Bayram's footnotes the first line of the third couplet is missing in M2; in the third couplet OR and T also read "vire" in place of "virür", T reads "hânei kim" and M1 and M2 "hâne kim" in place of "hânei". In the fourth couplet T has "kâmetüñ", and in the last couplet OR has "kim" in place of "ne". To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The language of the ghazal is woven from beginning to end out of the concepts of public order and the state: muhtesib, ta‘zîr, tekfîr, mesele, mülk (realm), şah (king), zulüm (oppression), dâd (justice), army, erkân-ı devlet (pillars of the state) and tedbir (measures). The opening couplet (matla) works the well-known opposition in divan poetry between the rind (free-spirited drinker) and the muhtesib. The muhtesib is the officer who supervises the market and morals and punishes drunkards; "ta‘zîr" is a punishment left to the judge's discretion. The poet puts the matter like a question of Islamic law: the muhtesib punishes the lovers, and the lovers in turn pronounce "tekfîr" on him, that is, declare him an unbeliever. "Ta‘zîr" and "tekfîr", two words from the language of punishment and judgement, are set against each other.

In the second couplet the word "kalb" carries a tevriye (double entendre): it means both heart and false coin, counterfeiting. The phrases "ehl-i tezvîr" (deceivers) and "kalb eli" (the hands of counterfeiters) describe the curls and brows joining hands to trample the realm of the heart as though it were a crime of fraud. There is also a play in the couplet between the idiom "el bir etmek" (to join hands) and the word "el" (hand) in "kalb eli".

The third couplet carries the gravest words in the ghazal: if the king commits oppression, who will give redress; if the architect pulls the house down, who will rebuild it? The second line supports the first with an example; this is irsâl-i mesel (the proverbial illustration). Read within the language of love, the king is the beloved and the house is the lover's heart; the one who builds the heart and the one who destroys it is the same beloved. But the couplet is at the same time a maxim saying that justice depends on the person at the very top. That these words stand in the divan of a sultan is striking. Yavuz Bayram writes that Bayezid was one of the sultans who, as his pen name also indicates, gave great importance to justice, and that the poets of his time often said so. The connection of the couplet with this idea is an interpretation; there is no source on the occasion for which the poem was written.

In the fourth couplet the lover is a soldier. His figure bent by sorrow is a bow, and his sigh rising to the sky an arrow; with these the lover goes out to face the army of sorrow. There is tenasüp (congruence of images) among kâmet (stature), keman (bow) and tîr (arrow). The couplet with the pen name (mahlas) carries this battle scene into a council of state. The army of sorrow wants to burn the realm of Adlî's heart, and the poet calls on the "erkân-ı devlet", the pillars of the state, for some measure. That the head of the state should ask his own viziers for help gives this couplet a quiet irony; the poet who is sultan is helpless when the realm of the heart is at stake. A similar turn appears in the couplet with the pen name of Ghazal 137 in the divan: there love has conquered the realm of the heart, and the poet says "let the pillars of the state take measures against it". The ta‘zîr of the muhtesib is also mentioned in the third couplet of the same ghazal. Âşık Çelebi's remark that Bayezid turned to poetry whenever he grew weary of the cares of the sultanate and the affairs of the realm can be read alongside these couplets, but the biographer of poets does not say this about any particular poem.

Bibliography

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018, p. 66, poem no. 28 (manuscript variants in the footnotes on p. 66); introduction, pp. 23-24 (on the importance Bayezid gave to justice); Ghazal 137, p. 175. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Yavuz Bayram, "Adlî (Sultan Bayezid-i Veli bin Fatih Sultan Mehmed)", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (TEİS) (Âşık Çelebi's assessment, quoted from Kılıç 1994: 54).

Online sources