Original Arabic Text

وبلدةٍ جمعت من كل مبهجة
فما يفوت لمرتاد بها وطر

Ve beldetin ceme‘at min kulli mubhicetin
Fe-mā yefūtu li-murtādin bihā veṭar

لكل مشترف من ربعها أفق
وكل مشترف من أفقها قمر

Li-kulli muşterifin min reb‘ihā ufuḳun
Ve kullu muşterifin min ufḳihā ḳamer

In English

1. Many a town has gathered in itself every beauty that gladdens; there no wish of one who comes seeking is left unfulfilled.

2. Every height of its land has a horizon, and every height of its horizon is a moon. (Hüsameddin ties this couplet to the mountains around Amasya: the city resembles a house surrounded on every side by high mountains, each mountain has its horizon, and the high point of each horizon is pointed like a sliver of the moon.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Poet

Abu al-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi (Ebü't-Tayyib el-Mütenebbî) is counted among the greatest poets of Arabic literature. According to the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam he was born in Kufa in 303 (915-16) and died in 354 (965). From early 337 (948) he spent nine years at the court of the Hamdanid emir Sayf al-Dawla (Seyfüddevle) in Aleppo. Sayf al-Dawla took him along on his campaigns, and al-Mutanabbi described the emir's wars against Byzantium in his kasides (qasidas). These poems are known as the "Sayfiyyat" and are valuable for history too, as the testimony of a poet who saw the events at first hand.

Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar attributes these two couplets to al-Mutanabbi in his Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya). According to him, the poet visited Amasya in the year 342 together with Sayf al-Dawla, the ruler of Aleppo whom he praised, toured the city and the gardens around it, and mentioned Amasya in these couplets while praising Sayf al-Dawla on the occasion of this conquest. This information rests on Hüsameddin alone. The TDV entry on Sayf al-Dawla records that he led summer campaigns into Byzantine territory until 343 (954), but it makes no mention of a campaign to Amasya. Nor could the place of the couplets in al-Mutanabbi's divan be found for this collection. For this reason the couplets are given here as couplets "attributed to al-Mutanabbi".

Structure of the Poem

The piece consists of two couplets (beyit) rhyming on the sound "-r": veṭar, ḳamer. The first line fits the pattern "Müstef‘ilün Fâ‘ilün Müstef‘ilün Fe‘ilün" of the basit metre of Arabic prosody; the source does not state the metre, and this scansion is ours. Hüsameddin gives the couplets in Arabic script and then adds a Turkish prose translation. The Latin-script reading under the original text is ours. The English rendering has been made from the Arabic text and compared with Hüsameddin's translation.

The first line opens with the construction known in Arabic as "wāw rubba": "ve beldetin" means "many a town" and builds a general praise without naming a particular city. The name of Amasya does not occur in the couplets. What links the poem to Amasya is Hüsameddin's record and translation; his translation begins "Amasya, insânı temâşâsıyla şâd ve mesrûr edecek her hüsn ü letâfeti nefsinde cem' etmiş bir belde-i azîmedir", Amasya is a great town that has gathered in itself every beauty and grace that delights a person who beholds it.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet praises the city as a whole. The city has gathered in itself everything that gives joy; whoever comes there looking for something does not go back empty-handed. Hüsameddin explains this line as "every seeker who comes and goes here to obtain his aim attains every kind of purpose and reaches his need". The praise rests on hyperbole (mübalağa): that every wish is fulfilled in one city presents it as a place holding all beauties.

The second couplet turns the eye upward. The word "muşterif" (height, high point) is repeated in both lines; in the first it describes the heights around the city, in the second the highest point of the horizon. Every height has its own horizon, and on the top of every horizon stands a moon. The return of the word "ufuk" (horizon), at the end of one line and in the middle of the other, builds a chain in the couplet: from the land to the height, from the height to the horizon, from the horizon to the moon. Hüsameddin understands this moon as the peaks of the mountains, pointed like slivers of the moon; this is a reading that agrees with the look of the Amasya valley ringed by mountains.

Historical Context

Hüsameddin gives the couplets in the first volume of Amasya Tarihi, among his quotations from authors who described Amasya. In this section, after descriptions from geographical works and the words of Charles Texier, Moltke and Hamdullah Mustawfi, come these couplets he attributes to al-Mutanabbi. They are followed by an Amasya fragment from Tâcîzâde Sa'dî Çelebi's Arabic Hayrü'l-ahlâm and by Hüsameddin's own Amasya murabba. Hüsameddin's aim is to show that the city has been praised since early times. Whether the couplets really belong to al-Mutanabbi, and whether they were said of Amasya, cannot be stated with certainty without comparing them against the editions of al-Mutanabbi's divan.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources