Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mefâilün feilâtün mefâilün feilün (müctes). The edition carries no metrical note for this ghazal; we scanned it ourselves.

Nedür bu hüsn ü şemâil nedür bu hulk-ı cemîl
Ki sende zâhir idüpdür Hudâ-yı Celle Celîl
Yüzüñde zülfüñ eger olmasa ne noksân kim
Çerâğ-ı şemse ne hâcet ger olmaz ise delîl
Niçe ki ‘ömr ile fikr eyledüm gice gündüz
Saçuñdan alımadı bir haber bu fikr-i tavîl
Göñül eşigüñ umar cânın itmedin kurbân
Ne çâre cennete girmege kişi olsa bahîl
Ne ola sabr ile şevk[in]den özge ‘Avnînüñ
Kabûl eyle budur varı ger kesîr ü kalîl

In English

1. What is this beauty and these graces, what is this fine nature that God, sublime in His glory, has made manifest in you?

2. What is lacking if there are no locks on your face? What need has the lamp of the sun for a wick?

3. However much I thought by night and day all my life, this long thought could find no news of your hair.

4. The heart hopes to reach your threshold without sacrificing its life; what way is there into Paradise if a man is a miser?

5. What does Avnî have besides his patience and his longing? Whether it be little or much, accept it; this is all he has.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The beloved praised here has an unusual feature: he has no hair. After the opening couplet's question of admiration, the couplets that follow work on this hairlessness. The rhyme falls on the "-îl" sound of the Arabic words "cemîl, Celîl, delîl, tavîl, bahîl, kalîl", no redif is used, and the five couplets are in the müctes metre.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet sums up the Sufi understanding of beauty. In Doğan's explanation all beings are reflections of God's being, and all beauty is a manifestation of His absolute beauty; God, wishing to be known, showed His attributes in the beings He created as mirrors. The beauty in the beloved's face and nature is one example of this manifestation.

The second and third couplets give the ghazal a particular colour. Doğan thinks that the beloved praised here is someone whose hair has been shaved. The Kalender dervishes, also called "abdal", "torlak", "cavlak" or "ışık", shaved off all their hair, beard, moustache and eyebrows. The poet says that hairlessness brings no lack to the face and explains this with a comparison: the lamp of the sun needs no wick. Doğan shows, with couplets he quotes from Rahmî and Hayâlî, that the word "delîl", besides its sense of sign or indication, was also used for the flame quivering at the tip of a lamp or candle and for the wick. The likening of the sun to a lamp alludes to the verse of the Sura of Noah, "and He made the sun a lamp", and the mention of the sun together with "delîl" to the verse of the Sura of the Criterion, "then We made the sun its guide (delîl)", where the sun is the sign of the shadow.

The third couplet makes a subtle joke of this: the lover has thought all his life, but his "fikr-i tavîl", his long thought, has found no news of the beloved's hair. The congruence between the length of hair and the length of thought takes on a separate meaning for the reader who knows there is no hair at all. The fourth couplet likens the beloved's threshold to the Kaaba and union with him to Paradise. Just as visiting the Kaaba without offering a sacrifice is meaningless, the threshold cannot be reached without sacrificing one's life; Doğan draws attention to the allusion to the hadith meaning "misers will not enter Paradise". In the last couplet the lover's wealth is counted, and it comes to patience and longing alone. Doğan sees an unordered lef ü neşr between "sabr" (patience) and "kalîl" (little), "şevk" (longing) and "kesîr" (much): longing is much, patience little.

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 49, pp. 369-372 (manuscript: Millet, Ali Emîrî Manzum 305, fol. 16b). https://ekitap.yek.gov.tr/urun/fatih-divani-ve-serhi--ucuncu-baski-_794.aspx

Online sources