Ârif is a poet with eleven aruz poems recorded in the Merzifon Cönkü. The article Metin Hakverdioğlu published in 2019 gives the first verse units of these poems but no information about the poet. No record has been found linking the poems in the cönk to a particular poet. The poet's identity, the place where he lived and his century are unknown; this page brings together his poems in the cönk and the information that can be drawn from them.

Poems in the Merzifon Cönkü

The cönk contains eleven poems under Ârif's name, all written in aruz: seven güftes, two dîvâns, a ghazal and a semai. The poems are recorded one after another on pages 10-18 of the cönk. Since a güfte is a song lyric written to be set to music, it can be said that Ârif appears in the cönk mostly with words written for composition. Several of these güftes seem tied to a particular event: one opens with a good wish that may be a feast-day greeting, one is a song of welcome with the refrain "hoş geldin, safa geldin", and one describes a "dâver" (sovereign) who left as commander of the army of Islam. The semai expresses thanks for rising from a sickbed; the ghazal is the supplication of a penitent who comes bareheaded before God. The other güftes and the dîvâns treat love: a fairy-faced beauty who steals reason at first sight, sorcerous glances, a beloved who grew from a child into a cypress, a life never once freed from grief, spring and the nightingale.

The article published only the first verse units of the poems; apart from the six-line first stanza of one güfte, only the opening couplet is given for all of them. In the second line of the ghazal one word was not read in the article, or was left blank. The first unit of each poem is given on a separate page in this category, with its original text, a modern Turkish rendering and commentary.

Connection with Amasya

The only known connection of the Ârif of the cönk with Amasya is that his poems appear in this cönk, which is thought to have been compiled in Merzifon. Hakverdioğlu obtained the cönk from Merzifon and has argued that it was compiled by a poet from the literary circle of Eyüb Sabrî of Merzifon, most probably Fethî. That Ârif's eleven poems stand one after another in the first pages of the cönk shows that the compiler had access to his poems; this suggests that the poet may have been someone known in the Merzifon circle, but does not prove it.

State of the Sources and Discussion

In the eleventh volume of Hüseyin Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi several people of Amasya bearing the name Ârif are mentioned (e-book pp. 473-478); among them are some described as poets. There is no information that would allow a link to be drawn between these people and the Ârif of the cönk, and the very frequency of the name makes such an identification even more difficult. It may be tempting to see a proper name in the word "enverim" in one of the güftes; but the word is also used of a beloved in the sense of "most radiant", and there is no other sign showing for which campaign the poem was written. Ârif's identity may become clearer as the full texts of the güftes are compared with any records in other miscellanies.

Bibliography

Online sources