Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Bu silk-i cevheri bu yâdigârı
Tamâm itdim o dem kalmadı kârı
Ve hem şehr-i Amâsiyyede bünyâd
Olup durur bu nazm-ı mâna âbâd
Amâsîyye halâyıkını ey ferd
Kazâdan sakla virme birine derd
İlahî yarlıga yârân ü ceddim
Recâ-yı lütfuna yok gerçi haddim
In English
1. I have completed this string of jewels, this keepsake to be left behind; at that moment no further task remained. (The poet likens his work to gems threaded on a string. The phrase "kalmadı kârı" can be read in two ways: "nothing in the work was left unfinished" or "after that moment no other task was left to me".)
2. Moreover, this work was founded in the city of Amasya; this poem, rich and full in meaning, stands there.
3. O God, the One without equal, protect the people of Amasya from misfortune; give none of them sorrow.
4. My God, forgive my friends and my forefathers; though I have no right to hope for Your grace.
Literary and Historical Commentary
The Poet
Mehmed Bey, who wrote under the pen name (mahlas) Hızrî, belonged to one of Amasya's long-established families. According to the ninth volume of Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn's Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya), he descended from Kabulî Ağazâde Hızır Paşa, governor of Amasya: his father Lütfullah Çelebi was the son of İbrahim Bey, son of Hızır Paşa, and Keşfî Mehmed Çelebi, chief secretary (ser-kâtib) to Selim I (Selim the Grim), was his paternal uncle. In his youth he studied learning and the scribal craft, and practised the various scripts under Abdullah Efendi of Amasya. When Selim came to the throne in 918 (1512), he went to Istanbul, entered the chancery of the Imperial Council (Divân-ı Hümâyûn), and under his uncle's patronage became a secretary of the Council.
The death of Selim, followed by the death of his uncle and the resignation of the grand vizier Pîrî Mehmed Paşa, himself a native of Amasya, changed the course of Hızrî's life. Under the grand vizierate of İbrahim Paşa (Makbul İbrahim) he was removed from the Council, served for a time as divan secretary to Yahşi Beyzâde İskender Paşa, and then, attaching himself to the treasurer Yenicelizâde İskender Çelebi, became a secretary of the Imperial Council once more. The execution of İskender Çelebi by hanging in 941, during Süleyman the Magnificent's Baghdad campaign, shook him deeply, and he died at the beginning of 942, shortly after returning to Istanbul. Hüsameddin describes him as "kâtib, münşî, şâir, hattât" (secretary, prose stylist, poet and calligrapher) and records that he left a divan and a treatise in verse called Âb-ı Hayat (The Water of Life). Latîfî, too, in his biographical anthology of poets (tezkire), counts "Hızrî-i Amâsyevî" among the men of the pen, notes that he died while the sultan was marching on Baghdad, and mentions him as a poet of mesnevis.
Structure of the Poem
The four couplets (beyit) are written in mesnevi form, that is, each couplet rhymes within itself: yâdigârı/kârı, bünyâd/âbâd, ferd/derd, ceddim/haddim. The mesnevi is the verse form of long narrative and didactic works; Hüsameddin likewise describes Âb-ı Hayat as "nesâyih ü mevâ'iz-i edebiyyeden bâhis risâle-i manzûme", a verse treatise on literary counsel and admonition. The source does not name the metre; the lines fit the pattern Mefâ'îlün Mefâ'îlün Fe'ûlün, one of the metres most often used in the Turkish mesnevi.
What survives here is not the whole treatise but the four couplets quoted by Hüsameddin. The opening couplet, which announces that the work is finished, and the prayers that follow suggest that the passage comes from the closing section of the treatise; Hüsameddin, however, does not say so explicitly, and the complete treatise could not be consulted for this study. Hüsameddin states that he saw the work in the imperial library, in a copy written in 989 (1581) by Bâlî bin Mehmed of Amasya, who had been trained in the Small Chamber of the Galata Palace. The same entry also quotes from Latîfî an opening couplet (matla) and a few mesnevi couplets on the virtue of keeping secrets; as they have no connection with Amasya, they are not included here.
Meaning and Figures of Speech
The first couplet rests on a familiar image of the old poetry: speech is jewellery threaded on a string ("silk-i cevher"). The poet likens his couplets to pearls and his work to the string on which they are strung; this is a common simile that brings the choosing of words and the building of couplets close to the jeweller's craft. Calling the work a "yâdigâr" (keepsake) in the same couplet shows that the poet thought of it as a memento that would outlive him. In the second couplet the words "bünyâd" (foundation) and "âbâd" (prosperous, flourishing) come from the vocabulary of building and of cities; the poem is described like an edifice whose foundations have been laid and which has been raised up. In this way the work and the city in which it was written meet in the same family of words: a work "founded" in Amasya is a structure "flourishing" in meaning.
The third couplet is a prayer and addresses God as "ferd", the One who is single and without equal. The poet commends the "halâyık" of Amasya, all the people who live there, to protection from calamity and misfortune. In the fourth couplet the prayer becomes personal: forgiveness is first asked for friends and forefathers, and then the poet adds a sentence of humility on his own behalf. The contrast between "recâ" (hope) and "had" (limit, due right) carries the thought that a servant cannot claim to deserve God's grace. The prayer for his forefathers takes on a further meaning in the mouth of a poet who belonged to a family descended from Hızır Paşa that had left charitable foundations in Amasya.
Historical Context
The four couplets show that a secretary of the Imperial Council, though he spent most of his life in Istanbul and on campaign, tied his work to his home town. The phrase "şehr-i Amâsiyyede bünyâd olup" in the second couplet means that the treatise was written, or begun, in Amasya; since the source does not say in which years Hızrî was in Amasya, the date of the work is also unknown. The most striking feature of the passage is that the poet, on finishing his work, prays for all the people of the city.
Hüsameddin answers this prayer in his own prose. Immediately after the couplets he writes: "Ah Amasya! Beni kendi uğrunda yıllarca fedakârane ve kimseden yardım görmeksizin çalıştıran ve bu şâir-i kadir-şinâsı sükkân-ı kirâmına duâ-hân eden, seni bütün maarifiyle, sanayiğiyle hayrat ü evkâfıyla müessesât-ı diniyye ve medeniyyesiyle asırlarca yükselten âl-i cenâb, keremkâr, kadir-şinâs ricâlin ve senin şerefindir." (Ah Amasya. It is to the honour of you and of your noble, generous and appreciative men, who for centuries raised you up with all your learning and crafts, your charities and endowments, your religious and civic institutions, that I have laboured for years on your behalf, devotedly and without anyone's help, and that this appreciative poet prays for your noble inhabitants.) In these lines the attachment of two Amasya writers to their city, four centuries apart, stands side by side: one prays for its people as he finishes his work, the other sets that prayer within years of historical labour. Hızrî's divan and the complete text of his treatise could not be consulted for this study; the poet's words on Amasya are given here as quoted by Hüsameddin.
Bibliography
- Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 9, ed. for publication by Eyüp Baş, Fatih Koca; eds. Songül Keçeci Kurt, Recep Orhan Özel, Metin Hakverdioğlu, Amasya: Amasya Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2022, pp. 119-120 (entry "Hızrî Mehmed Bey-Hızır Paşazâde"; original pagination pp. [386-388]) (transliteration: Eyüp Baş, Fatih Koca). amasya.bel.tr
- Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-şuarâ, entry "Hızrî-i Amâsyevî" (as quoted in Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 9, p. 120).
