Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Ka‘be-i kūyuña yol vir aña ki yol varamaz
Yitür anuñ dilegin kim yüz urup yalvaramaz
Çekdi çāk eyledi ten cübbesini ‘ışḳ henūz
Dostuñ dest-i ġamından yaḳasın ḳurtaramaz
Ṭoḳunam dir dil-i ‘uşşāḳa perīşāne meger
Ol perī şāne ile zülfin anuñçün ṭaramaz
Ḳılca fehm eyleyemez mūy-miyānuñ arasın
Şol ki diḳḳat idicek bir ḳılı iki yaramaz
Cevr oḳın atar iken yār kemānveş bile mi
Ṣıyabilür ne içün ḳolları ile ṣaramaz
Var mı bir gün ki güneş aḳşama dek şehre düşüp
Kū-be-kū der-be-der ol māh-liḳāyı aramaz
Bulmadum derdüme emsem lebüñ emsem bārī
Ṭāḳatüm ḳalmadı ṣabr itmege ḫālüm yaramaz
Āftābī ṭoġa devlet güneşi bir gün ola
Ḥaḳ Te‘ālā ḳulını ḳahr ile dā’im ḳaramaz

In English

1. Open the way into your street, which I hold as sacred as the Kaaba, to one who cannot find the road there; grant the wish of one who does not even know how to rub his face in the dust and plead.

2. Love has pulled off the robe of the body and torn it, and still the lover cannot free his collar from the hand of the beloved's grief. (To free one's collar means to escape. In the text preserved in Nazmî's anthology "death" stands in place of "love": even though death has torn the robe of the body, it cannot rescue the lover from the beloved's sorrow.)

3. That fairy-faced beloved does not comb her hair, for she fears that the teeth of the comb would touch the distracted hearts of lovers caught in her locks. ("Perīşāne", distracted, and "perī şāne", fairy and comb, sound almost the same.)

4. One who, looking closely, cannot split a single hair in two will not grasp even a hair's breadth of the space at your hair-thin waist. (The beloved's waist is as fine as a hair; seeing it calls for the attention of one who can split hairs.)

5. When the beloved draws her arms like a bow to shoot the arrow of cruelty, she can roll up her sleeves; why then does she not embrace me with those arms? (The words "bile mi" in the first line can be read in two ways: as the question "does she know?" or in the sense "at the same time"; in both readings the arm bared to draw the bow is set against the arm that never opens for an embrace.)

6. Is there a single day when the sun does not come down into the city and, until evening, search street by street and door by door for that moon-faced one? (The sun's daylong journey is explained as a search for the moon-faced beloved.)

7. I have found no cure for my pain; let me at least kiss your lips. I have no strength left to be patient, and my state is wretched. (In Old Turkish "em" means a remedy; there is a play on sound between "derdüme em", a cure for my pain, and "emsem", if I could suck.)

8. Âfitâbî, one day the sun of good fortune will rise; God Most High does not darken His servant with affliction forever.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of eight couplets in the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "fā‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün". The biographical anthology does not name the metre; the pattern emerges from scanning the couplets. The rhyme is the sound "-ar" (var, yalvar, ḳurtar, ṭar, yar, ṣar, ar, ḳar), and the suffix "-amaz" that follows it serves as the redif (refrain word). The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet in the form "Āftābī"; the biographical anthologies, too, mostly spell the poet's name Âftâbî. Since Âfitâbî's divan is not known today, the ghazal can only be assembled from biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire) and poetry collections. The eight-couplet text adopted here comes from Âşık Çelebi's Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ; some manuscripts of that anthology lack the fourth to seventh couplets. In Mecma‘u'n-nezâ'ir, the anthology of response poems (nazire) compiled by Nazmî of Edirne, the ghazal has seven couplets; the couplet beginning "Ḳılca fehm eyleyemez" is missing there, "mevt" (death) is read instead of "‘ışḳ" in the second couplet, and the order of the couplets differs slightly.

Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi and Beyânî give the second couplet and the closing couplet of this ghazal after the poet's famous opening couplet "Yine diş yārası var", as if they continued the same poem. Since rhyme and redif are entirely different, it is clear that they come from two separate poems. Hüseyin Hüsameddin, too, quotes four couplets of the ghazal from Âşık Çelebi in his History of Amasya.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens by likening the beloved's quarter to the Kaaba. In divan poetry the beloved's door and street are imagined as a holy place on which the lover rubs his face and around which he circles; the phrase "Ka‘be-i kūy" is a compact expression of that idea. The request in the first couplet is that the beloved take pity on a lover who cannot find the road and does not even know how to plead. In the second couplet this helplessness becomes a harsher image: the body is a robe, love has torn it, yet the lover's collar is still in the hand of the beloved's grief. Because collar and robe belong to the same garment, the couplet builds a congruence of images (tenasüp). The reading "mevt" in Nazmî makes the meaning even starker; in that text not even death can free the lover from grief.

The third couplet is the most skilful point of the ghazal. "Perīşāne" and "perī şāne" carry almost the same sounds; one means "distracted", the other "fairy" and "comb". This play on sound is a fine example of what the old rhetoricians called cinas (paronomasia). The meaning is as finely wrought as the sound: the lovers' hearts are entangled in the beloved's hair, so she reasons that a comb would touch them and leaves her hair uncombed. The disorder of her locks is thus explained as a sign of mercy; here, too, is hüsn-i talil, the figure divan poetry loved, which assigns a poetic cause to an event.

In the fourth couplet the beloved's waist is as fine as a hair and is called "mūy-miyān" (hair-waist). Seeing it requires an attention able to split a hair in two; the Turkish idiom "kılı kırk yarmak", to split a hair forty ways, lies behind the couplet. Here the word "yaramaz" means "cannot split"; in the seventh couplet, in "ḫālüm yaramaz", "my state is wretched", the same word recurs with an entirely different meaning. Using two identically written words with different meanings in rhyme position is one of the most striking features of the ghazal. Archery terms enter in the fifth couplet: to shoot the arrow of cruelty the beloved rolls up her sleeves like a bow, yet she does not open those arms to embrace the lover. The contrast between bow and arrow, arm and embrace, carries the wit of the couplet.

The sixth couplet forms a hidden link with the poet's pen name. Âfitâbî means "of the sun, sunlike"; in the couplet the sun is imagined as a lover who roams the city all day searching for the moon-faced beloved. The sun's daily journey from east to west is attributed to that search. In the closing couplet the link comes into the open: the phrase "Āftābī ṭoġa devlet güneşi" brings together the pen name and the sun, rising and darkening. The poet ends the ghazal on a note of hope, saying that his fortune will one day turn and that God will not keep His servant darkened by affliction forever. The words "em" and "emsem" in the seventh couplet belong to the same play of sounds: when no cure for the pain can be found, the lover sees the beloved's lips as a remedy.

Historical Context

Âşık Çelebi presents the ghazal in the context of Âfitâbî's passion for a young man named Çerâğ. According to the biographer, Âfitâbî spent the end of his life as a Sufi preacher in and around Amasya who kept away from people, and he had become a moth to this Çerâğ's beauty. Âşık Çelebi himself saw Çerâğ in his old age: he was then a bookseller in the Bedesten of Istanbul and went about reciting the ghazals Âfitâbî had written for him. Hüsameddin writes that this Çerâğ must be Mirliva Çerâğ Bey, son of Yağlu Murad Bey, who lived in the Dârüsselâm quarter of Amasya, and adds that Sa'dî Çelebi, treasurer (defterdar) of Amasya, was also among his admirers; he does not name the source of this identification.

The hope expressed in the closing couplet, that "the sun of fortune will rise", lends itself to being read alongside an episode related by Latîfî. According to Latîfî, Âfitâbî had entered the private circle of Prince Bayezid while the prince was governor (sanjak-bey) of Amasya, and was later removed from it through the intrigues of the envious. No source, however, connects this ghazal with that episode; complaint against fortune is a common theme in divan poetry. When the ghazal was written is not known.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Filiz Kılıç, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018 (e-book), pp. 143-144, entry on Âftâbî; manuscript variants in the footnotes of the same pages. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi, Tezkiretü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2017 (e-book), pp. 196-197, entry on Âftâbî. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Beyânî, Tezkiretü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Aysun Sungurhan, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2017 (e-book), p. 26, entry on Âftâbî. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-şu'arâ ve Tabsıratü'n-nuzamâ, ed. Rıdvan Canım, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018 (e-book), pp. 135-136, entry on Âftâbî. ekitap.ktb.gov.tr
  • Abdizâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi 6-8. Cilt, ed. Songül Keçeci Kurt - Recep Orhan Özel - Metin Hakverdioğlu, Amasya: Amasya Belediyesi, 2022, pp. 20-21. amasya.bel.tr

Official sources

  • Edirneli Nazmî, Mecma‘u'n-nezâ'ir, ed. M. Fatih Köksal, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2012 (e-book), p. 1066 (as quoted in M. Fatih Köksal, "Âfitâbî", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/afitabi).

Online sources