Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün (remel). The edition does not name the pattern of these "şâh şâh" lines; the name is ours.

Gül yüzüñ üzre ki düşmüş ca‘d-ı kâkül şâh şâh
Zînet itmiş bâğ-ı hüsnüñ tâze sünbül şâh şâh
Hâl-i anber-bâruñ ile mûy-i pür-çînler ki var
Rişte-i çûb üzre bitmiş ‘ıkd-i fülfül şâh şâh
Bâğ-ı ‘âlemde yüzüñ mânend bir gül isteyüp
Cüst ü cû idüp gezer gülzârı bülbül şâh şâh
Gonca-i ser-beste mektûb eyleyüp gül şâhına
Gülşen içre bülbül ezberler teressül şâh şâh
‘Avnîyâ mekr-i rakîb-i dîvi def‘ itsün diyü
Peyk-i âhuñ boynına takdum hamâyil şâh şâh

In English

1. The curls of your forelock have fallen branch by branch over your rose face; it is as if fresh hyacinths, branch by branch, had adorned the garden of your beauty.

2. Your amber-scented moles and your curling locks are like clusters of peppercorns grown, branch by branch, on a slender stem.

3. The nightingale, seeking in the garden of the world a rose like your face, roams the rose garden branch by branch in search of it.

4. The closed bud has written a letter to the king of roses (or to the rose branch); in the rose garden the nightingale learns that correspondence by heart, branch by branch.

5. O Avnî, so that it might ward off the trickery of the devilish rival, I hung amulets, ring upon ring, around the neck of my sigh's courier.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The doubled word "şâh şâh" in the redif hangs all the images of the ghazal on the branches of a tree. In Persian "şâh" means branch; the doubling gives the sense "branch by branch, cluster by cluster". Since the same word also means king, in the fourth couplet "gül şâhı" can be read both as rose branch and as king of roses. The rhyming words "kâkül, sünbül, fülfül, bülbül, teressül, hamâyil" share the ending "-ül"; "hamâyil" in the final couplet fits this sound only approximately. Its five couplets move in the four-foot remel pattern.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first two couplets draw the beloved's face as a garden. The bright, red cheek is the garden, and the black, fragrant forelocks falling over it are fresh hyacinths. The comparison in the second couplet is more unusual: the amber-scented moles and the curling locks are likened to a cluster of peppercorns grown on a slender stalk. Doğan links the description of the mole as amber-scented to the dark colour of ambergris and to the custom of the time of making artificial moles with ink mixed with amber.

The third couplet is a hüsnütalil (a poetic explanation of a natural fact): the nightingale's roaming of gardens is explained as a search for a rose resembling the beloved's face. The fourth couplet rests on a favourite comparison of divan poetry. The closed bud, wrapped in its green sepals, is a "nâme-i ser-beste", a sealed, secret letter. The nightingale is memorising this letter to take it to the king of roses; Doğan, recalling that secret messages were once carried by memory rather than written down for fear of capture, also gives as examples couplets by Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi that use the same conceit. "Teressül" means the art of letter-writing and a collection of letters; what the nightingale learns by heart is a book of correspondence.

The final couplet is built on two words taken from palace life. The "peyk" is the foot courier, known for his running, who carried the sultan's orders; Mehmed II's law code orders that on campaign the head of the couriers should walk at the sultan's stirrup. The "hamâyil" is an amulet hung around the neck for protection against evil beings. The lover's sigh rising to heaven is likened to a courier, and the smoke of this sigh rising ring upon ring to the amulets hung on the courier's neck; the amulet protects the courier of the sigh from the trickery of the devilish rival. A sultan making his own couriers the stuff of a love couplet is a good example of the words that pass from the palace into the poetry of the divan.

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 7, pp. 124-128 (manuscript: Millet, Ali Emîrî Manzum 305, fol. 3b). https://ekitap.yek.gov.tr/urun/fatih-divani-ve-serhi--ucuncu-baski-_794.aspx

Online sources