Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün (remel). The edition does not write the shared pattern of the three couplets; we found by scanning that it is remel.

Zülfüñüñ zencîrine bend eyledüñ şâhum beni
Kullugından kılmasun âzâd Allâhum beni
Cevr-i dilber ta‘n-ı düşmen sûz-ı fürkat za‘f-ı dil
Dürlü dürlü derd içün yaratmış Allâhum beni
Yakmağa vü yıkmağa hep cümle el bir itdiler
Sûz-ı sîne eşk-i dîde âteş-i âhum beni

In English

1. O my king, you have bound me to the chain of your locks; may my God never free me from (that) servitude.

2. The beloved's cruelty, the enemy's reproach, the burning of separation, the weakness of the heart: my God has created me for pains of every kind.

3. The burning of my breast, the tears of my eye, the fire of my sigh have all joined hands to burn and ruin me.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

These three couplets look like the remains of a ghazal; Doğan too says that they "resemble an incomplete ghazal". They do not appear in the Millet manuscript. Ali Emîrî noted in his own copy of the divan (Manzum 530, fol. 43a) that he took the first two couplets from the tezkire of Âşık Çelebi and the third from the history of Enderunlu Atâ. Georg Jacob too, in his 1904 edition, gives the opening couplet from Atâ in Arabic script as "زلفنک زنجیرینه بند ایلدی شاهم بنی"; in his text the second line is "قوللغندن ایتمسون آزاد اللهم بنی" (Kulluğundan itmesün âzâd Allâhum beni), with "itmesün" in place of the "kılmasun" of Doğan's text. Because of the different sources it is not certain that the three couplets belong to the same ghazal; their redif and metre, however, agree.

The redif is "beni" (me), in the pattern "Allâhum beni / âhum beni"; the rhyme is in "-âhum" in the words "şâhum, Allâhum, âhum", and all three couplets are in remel.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet uses the contrast between servitude and freedom. The lover has been bound to the chain of the beloved's locks, and his wish is not to escape this chain but that God should never free him from this servitude. The address "şâhum" (my king) makes the beloved a sultan and the lover his slave; that this wish should come from the mouth of a sultan sets up once more the exchange seen in many couplets of the divan.

The second couplet fits four pains into one line: the beloved's cruelty, the enemy's reproach, the burning of separation and the weakness of the heart. The lover does not complain of them; he counts himself created for pains of every kind. In the third couplet three elements, the burning of the breast, the tears of the eye and the fire of the sigh, join hands to burn and ruin the lover. Fire and water are usually set against each other; here, however, the tears do not put out the fire but join it in the destruction.

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 77, pp. 545-546 (not in Millet 305; Ali Emîrî's copy (Manzum 530) fol. 43a; the first two couplets from Âşık Çelebi, the third from Enderunlu Atâ's history). https://ekitap.yek.gov.tr/urun/fatih-divani-ve-serhi--ucuncu-baski-_794.aspx
  • Georg Jacob (ed.), Der Divan Sultan Mehmeds des Zweiten, des Eroberers von Konstantinopel, zum ersten Male nach der Uppsalaer Handschrift, Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1904, p. 17 (XX, opening couplet in Arabic script, from Atâ). https://archive.org/details/derdivansultanm00jacogoog

Online sources