Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: fâilâtün feilâtün feilâtün feilün (remel). This opening couplet carries no metre in the edition; reading it as mahbun remel is ours.
Derd-i ‘ışkuñ ki benüm mûnis ü gam-hârum ola
Hâşe li’llâh ki dahı yâr-ı vefâ-dârum ola
In English
1. Since the pain of loving you has become my companion and sharer of my grief, God forbid that I should ever have another faithful beloved.
Literary and Historical Commentary
Structure of the Poem
With its two lines rhyming on "gam-hârum ola" and "vefâ-dârum ola", the couplet may in this form be the opening of a ghazal; but the rest of the ghazal is unknown. It is recorded on page 81 of Ali Emîrî's Cevâhirü'l-Mülûk, where, as Doğan points out, no source is given; it is not in the Millet manuscript. As with the Arabic couplet taken from the same work, it is not known which older source it rests on. It is written in mahbun remel.
Meaning and Figures of Speech
The couplet puts the pain of love in the beloved's place. The lover's "mûnis", the friend who keeps him company in his loneliness, and his "gam-hâr", the companion who shares his grief, are not the beloved herself but the pain her love gives. This pain does everything a faithful beloved would do; so the lover wants no other faithful beloved and rejects the idea with the words "hâşe li'llâh", God forbid. In divan poetry faithlessness is a familiar quality of the beloved; the couplet sets the faithfulness of the pain of love against this faithlessness. The pain itself has become a companion more loyal than the beloved ever was.
Bibliography
- Fâtih Sultan Mehmed (Avnî), Fâtih Dîvânı ve Şerhi / Dīwān of Sultan Mehmed II with Commentary, ed. Muhammet Nur Doğan, English trans. Michael D. Sheridan, 3rd ed., Istanbul: Türkiye Yazma Eserler Kurumu Başkanlığı, 2023, poem 84, p. 558 (not in Millet 305; Ali Emîrî, Cevâhirü'l-Mülûk, p. 81, without a source). https://ekitap.yek.gov.tr/urun/fatih-divani-ve-serhi--ucuncu-baski-_794.aspx
Online sources
