Âşıkî, Manzume 91: Gine biñ dürlü sûret dutdı 'âlem

Manzume 91 — Gine biñ dürlü sûret dutdı 'âlem

Amasya05 Editorial Board • Editor: Mevlüt Erdem Öztürk • 01 October 2026 • Updated: 14 October 2026 • 3 min reading

A time of transition in five couplets: Mehmed Çelebi's death is hidden for forty-one days, the physician Gûrdüzen makes the dead man stroke his beard, and Murad is awaited.

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Gine biñ dürlü sûret dutdı 'âlem
Karış murış olısardur bu âdem

Yeñi sözler diyiserdür bu diller
Yiñi defter yazısardur bu kalem

Düzildi geldi vü şâdî melâmet
Ki her ferah yanında yoldaşı gam

Cihân nakşını nakkâş böyle yazdı
Nitekim dün ü gündüz olmadı kem

İrince ol Murâd Han murâda
Niçe nutk u nâtıklar oldı ebkem

In English

1. Once again the world has taken on a thousand forms; this man will be thrown into confusion (again).

2. These tongues will speak new words; this pen will write a new register.

3. Joy and disgrace were arranged and came; for beside every delight its companion is grief.

4. The painter wrote the picture of the world thus; just as night and day did not grow less.

5. Until that Murad Han attained his wish, many words and many speakers fell mute.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Hidden Death

Mehmed Çelebi dies at Edirne, and the real subject of the eightieth chapter is how his death was concealed. The paşas take measures so that the death will not be known until Murad comes: every day the council sits at the Porte, banners and timars are granted, physicians come and go and ask the paşas for all kinds of herbs as medicine. Meanwhile a courier is sent to the chief taster Elvan Beg. One day the armour-bearers press upon the paşas: "Where is our sovereign, what has happened, why does he not come out?" Hacı İvaz Paşa puts them off until the next day. A physician named Gûrdüzen, who had come from Persia and been Yıldırım Han's doctor, devises a plan: he seats a boy behind the dead man and by some craft the dead man's hand moves, so that he strokes his own beard. The physician throws his turban on the ground and says, "you are keeping the sovereign from recovering"; the aghas see the sovereign stroking his beard and disperse. The death is hidden for forty-one days.

Speech Struck Dumb

Five couplets look at the time of transition that follows this scene. The world has taken a new form; tongues will speak new words, the pen will write a new register. The third couplet sets joy and grief side by side: beside every delight a grief keeps company. In the fourth the world is imagined as a picture written by a painter. The fifth couplet points to Murad's accession: until he attained his wish, many speakers fell mute. There is an open pun between "Murâd Han" and "murâd", wish. The strangeness of the death scene, a dead man stroking his beard, is not mentioned at all in these couplets; the author leaves the drama to the prose and carries in the poem only the weight of change. The rhyme rests on "-em/-am": 'âlem, âdem, kalem, gam, kem, ebkem.