Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Title: Üsküdâr’dan Amasya’da Müftî-zâde Şâ‘ir Emrî Efendi’ye: Amasya İçin

Şöyle bir gördüm Amasya şehrini rü’yâ gibi
Hâtır-ı fâtırda kaldı şekli de hülyâ gibi
Her minâre manzar-ı islâma ulviyyet-nümâ
Câ-be-câ âlî cevâmi‘ Ka‘be-i ulyâ gibi
Ben yeşillensem Yeşilırmağı’na ta‘n eyleme
Cûşiş-i dil-cû ferah-zâ seyri bak deryâ gibi
Zîr ü bâlâ bir usûl üzre dolâbın her biri
Nağme-perdâz olmada hep mutrib-i gûyâ gibi
Tahtıhe’l-enhâr zî-eşcâr vâdî dil-nişîn
Cennet-âsâdır ne İsviçre ne İspanya gibi
Siyyemâ sîb-i nefîsi yok Kızılelma’da da
Hâkinin hâsiyyet-i feyz-âveri kimyâ gibi
Şimdi bir vâlisi vardır Tal‘at-ı behcet-fezâ
Azm-i umrân-perveri şehri hemân ihyâ gibi
Kalsa Remzî anda bir müddet yazıp evsâfını
Bir eser te’lîf ederdi Asrî-i dünyâ gibi

In English

1. I saw the city of Amasya just briefly, as if in a dream; its image has stayed in my weary mind like a fancy.

2. Each of its minarets lends loftiness to the face of Islam; its great mosques, rising here and there, are like the exalted Kaaba.

3. If I "turn green" for its Yeşilırmak, that is, if I lose my heart to it, do not blame me; look at its heart-winning, gladdening, surging flow, like a sea. (The poet plays on the river's name, "Green River", and the verb "yeşillenmek", to turn green, colloquially to set one's heart on something.)

4. Each of the water wheels on the river, low and high, turning to the same rhythm, pours out melodies like a singing musician.

5. Its valley, full of trees, with rivers flowing beneath, pleasing to the heart, is like paradise; neither Switzerland nor Spain resembles it.

6. Above all, its exquisite apple is not found even in Kızılelma (the legendary "Red Apple"); the fruitful property of its soil is like alchemy, the elixir that turns everything to gold.

7. It now has a governor named Tal‘at, whose face spreads joy; his zeal for public works is as if bringing the city back to life. ("Tal‘at" means both "face, countenance" and is the governor's name.)

8. Had Remzî stayed there a while and written of its qualities, he would have composed a work like that of Asrî, renowned in the world.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of eight couplets. The redif (refrain word) is "gibi" (like), and the rhyme is the sound "-yâ / -â" (rü’yâ, hülyâ, ulyâ, deryâ, gûyâ, İspanya, kimyâ, ihyâ, dünyâ). The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The source does not state the metre; the lines fit the pattern Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün. The text is taken from Mehmet Arslan's paper. In the opening couplet as quoted by Yakup Şafak from Emrî's anthology in Amasya, the second line reads "şekli bir hülyâ gibi"; the difference does not alter the meaning.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal is a praise of a city, but it is immediately clear that it comes from the pen of a Mevlevi sheikh. In the second couplet the mosques are likened to the Kaaba, and the phrase "tahtıhe'l-enhâr" (with rivers flowing beneath) in the fifth is a quotation from the Qur'anic description of paradise. The fourth couplet is built throughout on musical terms: "zîr" (high note), "usûl" (rhythmic cycle), "nağme" (melody) and "mutrib" (musician). In this couplet, which likens the sound of the water wheels to an ensemble performing a fasıl, one can hear the ear of a poet who completed his training in the semâ in his youth and spent his life in Mevlevi lodges; this reading is our own. The subject of the comparison, however, is a real landscape: the water wheels on the banks of the Yeşilırmak that watered the vineyards and gardens.

The lightest couplet is the third: the pun between "yeşillenmek" and the Yeşilırmak excuses the poet's infatuation with the river by way of a joke. In the sixth couplet the apple and Kızılelma, in the seventh "tal‘at" (countenance) and the governor's name, and in the eighth "asrî" (of the age) and the pen name of Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn form double entendres (tevriye). The mention of Switzerland and Spain in place of the distant, legendary places of classical poetry shows the traditional pattern carried into the twentieth century.

Historical Context

The title says the ghazal was sent from Üsküdar to the poet Ahmed Emrî Yetkin, son of the mufti of Amasya. According to Şafak, Emrî's anthology carries at the end of the poem the note "from his letter dated 22 Teşrîn-i evvel 936", and on folio 81b of the same anthology there is a note that Remzî came to Amasya with his son-in-law on Sunday, 4 October 1936, stayed at the house of Celâl Bey, son of the Mevlevi sheikh, went to the village of Yüzbeyi the next day and then on to Çorum. Read together, the two records show that the ghazal was sent with a letter written eighteen days after this one-day visit; this connection is inferred from the dates. According to the list of the Governorship of Amasya, Talat Öncel served as governor between 1935 and 1945 and must be the "Tal‘at" of the seventh couplet. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, named in the last couplet, was alive at the time. By complimenting the city's historian, Remzî offers his poem to an Amasya friend who knew the city better than he did. Detailed notes on the places mentioned appear on the page in the Amasya Poems section, and the poet's life in the article Ahmed Remzi Akyürek.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

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