Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün

Şāhum ḫayālüñ eylemese gözlerüm maḳām
Eşküm ḥabābın itmezidi lālegūn ḫıyām
Kāfir gözini yār Müselmān ider gibi
Müjgānı tutmış iki ṭaraf tīġ-i bī-niyām
Göñlüm evinde gözleri gūyā bir iki mest
Ceng idüp itdi şīşeci dükkān işin temām
Nāṣıḥ ḳo beni cānuma ḫoş gelmedi sözüñ
Var ögüdüñi başuña vir ḥāṣıl-ı kelām
‘Aks-i lebi gözüñde ṣanasın yine ‘Adlī
Rengīn mey ile aṣılu dükkān öñinde cām

In English

1. My shah, had your image not made my eyes its dwelling place, my tears would not have turned their bubbles into tulip-coloured (red, bloody) tents. That is, the red bubbles of the tears are tents pitched for the image of the shah that lodges in the eye.

2. As if the beloved were making the infidel eye a Muslim, his eyelashes hold unsheathed swords on both sides. The lashes on either side of the eye are likened to swords held over an infidel who is being made to change his faith by force.

3. In the house of my heart his eyes are like one or two drunkards; brawling, they finished off the glassmaker's shop (wrecked the shop entirely). The heart is like a glassmaker's shop full of fragile glass.

4. Admonisher, leave me alone; your words did not please my soul. In short, go and give your advice to your own head.

5. Adlî, you would think the reflection of the beloved's lip in your eye is once again a cup filled with coloured wine, hung in front of a shop. The red of the lip appears in the eye reddened by tears; this sight is likened to a cup of red wine hanging before a shop.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The attribution of the second couplet of this ghazal is disputed. Sehî Beg's Heşt Bihişt gives the couplet "Kāfir gözini yār Müselmān ider gibi" in its entry on Mevlânâ Hadîdî, as one of Hadîdî's poems. According to Sehî, Hadîdî came from the town of Ferecik in Rumelia, served there as a preacher (hatib), and took his pen name from the word hadîd, "iron", because he earned his living as a smith; he also wrote a verse history of the Ottoman house (Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân). The ghazal itself appears in Bayram's edition in only one of the five manuscripts, T (44b-45a); it is absent from OR, İBB, M1 and M2. When a ghazal that rests on a single manuscript contains a couplet that a biographical anthology of poets (tezkire) gives to another poet, it is hard to say anything certain about its authorship.

The ghazal (gazel) has five couplets and is written in the muzâri metre "mef‘ûlü fâ‘ilâtü mefâ‘îlü fâ‘ilün". It has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme rests on the sound "-âm": makām, hıyām, bî-niyām, temām, kelām, cām. Because it rests on a single manuscript, the edition records no variant readings. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet sends the beloved's image on a journey like a sovereign. A shah has tents pitched wherever he halts; for the image that lodges in the lover's eye, the bubbles of the tears become tulip-coloured tents. "Habâb", in its dictionary sense, is a bubble on water, and "hıyâm" means tents; the comparison of the round, hollow bubble to a tent, combined with the redness of bloody tears, completes the picture of the couplet. Addressing the beloved as "my shah" carries a situation frequent in Adlî's poems: the lover places himself as the servant of a shah, while the poet who writes the verse is himself a sultan.

The second couplet is the disputed one, and it contains the most striking comparison in the ghazal. In classical Ottoman poetry the beloved's eye is often called "infidel" because it is merciless and sheds blood. Here the eye is surrounded on both sides by lashes; the poet likens these lashes to swords drawn from their sheaths, and the eye to an infidel who is to be made a Muslim at the point of the sword. There is antithesis between "kâfir" and "Müselmân", and a simile (teşbih) between "müjgân" (eyelashes) and "tîğ" (sword).

In the third couplet the heart is a house, and the beloved's two eyes are one or two drunkards who start a fight in it. Brawling, the drunkards have "finished off the glassmaker's shop", that is, they have broken all the glass. In classical poetry the languid, heavy-lidded eye is likened to a drunkard, and the breaking of the heart is expressed through glass and bottles. The couplet joins these two familiar comparisons in a single scene.

The fourth couplet drops to the level of speech. The lover tells the admonisher (nâsıh), who urges him to give up love, "leave me alone", and cuts him short with "give your advice to your own head". The phrase "hâsıl-ı kelâm" (in short) reinforces this brusque dismissal.

The closing couplet returns to the image of the shop from the third couplet. The reflection of the lip in Adlî's eye is likened to a cup full of coloured wine hung in front of a shop. A link is drawn between the red of the lip and the colour of the wine, and between the roundness of the eye and the shape of the cup. The words "mey" (wine), "cām" (cup), "mest" (drunk) and "dükkān" (shop) form a web of congruent images (tenasüp) across the last two couplets of the ghazal.

Bibliography

  • Yavuz Bayram (ed.), Adlî Dîvânı (Dîvân-ı Sultân Bâyezîd-i Sânî), Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018, p. 137, poem no. 99 (manuscript information in the footnote on the same page). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Sehî Beg, Heşt Bihişt, ed. Halûk İpekten, Günay Kut, Mustafa İsen, Hüseyin Ayan, Turgut Karabey, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2017 (e-book), entry on Mevlânâ Hadîdî, pp. 130-131.