Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Fikr eyle mebde’in nereden neredir ma’âd
Hem geldügünden işbû makâma nedir murâd

In English

1. Reflect: where is your beginning from, and where is your place of return; and what is the purpose of your coming to this station (the world)?

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

According to Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar's Amasya Tarihi, this single couplet is one of those that Mecdî Mehmed Efendi quotes from Ahmedî's İskendernâme in his translation of the Şakâyık. Hüsameddin writes that the İskendernâme is kept in the Fatih Library, that it is full of the words of old Turkish and should be counted a great treasure for the old literature and the old dictionaries, and gives the couplet after this note. Both lines rhyme, on "ma’âd" and "murâd"; since in a mesnevi every couplet rhymes within itself, this does not reveal the couplet's place in the work. The long lines of this couplet are in a different metre from the short lines of the other passage quoted from the same place; it may therefore come from a separate lyric piece set within the İskendernâme. The TEİS entry also notes that the work contains independent poems here and there. This distinction is our inference; the source gives no metre. Nor does it say from which part of the work the couplet is taken.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet fits three questions about human existence into a single sentence of counsel: where one has come from, where one will return, and the purpose of the coming. "Mebde’" (beginning) and "ma’âd" (place of return, the hereafter) are two basic concepts of theology and philosophy, and there is a plain antithesis between them. In the second line the words "geldügün" (your coming) and "makâm" (station) stand for the life of this world between the two ends, and "murâd" for the meaning of that life. Beginning, road, halting place and purpose thus form a congruence of images (tenasüp) in which each word calls up the others. The imperative "Fikr eyle" (reflect) is an example of the language of counsel to which Ahmedî often turns in the İskendernâme as he tells the life of Alexander. According to TEİS, in this work the poet, on various occasions arising from Alexander's deeds, gives information according to the learning of his time and offers religious and moral teaching; the couplet chosen by Mecdî represents this instructive side.

The question the couplet asks gains further meaning in the light of Ahmedî's life. It is fitting that a poet whose journey took him from Egypt to Germiyan, from Bursa to Edirne, and at the end of his life to Amasya, where according to Hüsameddin he returned to the city of his birth and died, should ask "where one comes from and where one returns"; but the sources make no such link, and this is offered only as a reading.

Bibliography

Online sources