Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: feilâtün feilâtün feilâtün feilün (remel). The edition shows no metre for this piece of disputed authorship; the identification comes from us.

Cigerüm pâreledi hançer-i cevr ü sitemüñ
Sabrumuñ câmesini doğradı mikrâz-ı gamuñ
Secde-gâh eyler idi Ka‘bede mihrâb gibi
Kûyuñ içinde melek görse nişân-ı kademüñ
Ey gözüm gün yüzine karşu nice dür dökesün
Ruhleri tâbı ile kurıdı kalmadı nemüñ

In English

1. The dagger of your cruelty and reproach has torn my liver to pieces; the shears of grief for you have cut up the robe of my patience.

2. Should an angel see the trace of your foot in your street, he would make it a place of prostration like the prayer niche in the Kaaba.

3. O my eye, how will you shed pearls before (that) sun-like face? You have dried up with the fire of her cheeks, no moisture is left to you.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The authorship of this three-couplet piece is disputed. The Millet manuscript does not contain it; Ali Emîrî reports in his own copy (Manzum 530, fol. 36a) that he compiled it from the tezkires of Âşık Çelebi, Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi and Riyâzî. As Doğan records, however, Latîfî gives the same three couplets to Mehmed II's son, Bayezid II. Bayezid too was a sultan who wrote poetry under the pen name "Adlî", and he lived for many years in Amasya as governor of the province; the division of the biographers between father and son makes it impossible to say with certainty from whose hand the poem came. Doğan, following Ali Emîrî, included the piece in his edition and also noted Latîfî's record. In Latîfî's entry on Sultan Bâyezîd the ghazal has four couplets: in third place stands the couplet "Çıkdı cân hasret ile ölmedigüm budur lîk / Hükm ider cân yerine tende durup derd ü gamuñ" (the soul has left with longing; the reason I do not die is that your pain and grief stay in the body and rule in place of the soul), and the first line of the last couplet reads "Ey gözüm gün yüzine karşu nice yaş dökesin" (O my eye, how will you shed tears before that sun-like face). The poems Bayezid II wrote under the pen name Adlî are on this site in the section Adlî (Bayezid II); this ghazal is not there, because it is not found in the edition of Adlî's divan.

The redif is the second-person suffix "-üñ", and the rhyme rests on the sound "-em / -am" in the words "sitemüñ, gamuñ, kademüñ, nemüñ". The metre is mahbun remel, with "feilâtün" even in the first foot. It looks like three couplets of a ghazal; the opening couplet is formed by both lines of the first couplet ending in the same sound.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In the first couplet two cutting tools open two different wounds. The beloved's reproach and cruelty tear the liver to pieces like a dagger; the grief of love, like shears, cuts up the robe of patience. Doğan says that patience is likened to a robe because of its tightness and its wrapping of the body, and that this robe cut up by the shears of grief also recalls the lover's wounded body. The second couplet hallows the beloved's footprint: if the angels saw his footprint in his street, they would prostrate themselves there as at the prayer niche of the Kaaba. Doğan says that in this couplet the words angel, street, footprint, Kaaba, mihrab and place of prostration are used as Sufi figures, and that the beloved is God, the source of all beauty.

In the third couplet the lover addresses his eye. The eye wants to shed pearls, that is, tears, before the beloved's sun-like face, but the fire of the cheeks has dried it; no moisture is left. The knowledge that the sun dries up water describes the state of a lover so worn out that he can no longer weep.

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 78, pp. 547-548 (not in Millet 305; Ali Emîrî's copy (Manzum 530) fol. 36a; from the tezkires of Âşık Çelebi, Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi and Riyâzî; Latîfî gives it to Bayezid II). https://ekitap.yek.gov.tr/urun/fatih-divani-ve-serhi--ucuncu-baski-_794.aspx
  • Latîfî, Tezkiretü'ş-Şuarâ ve Tabsıratü'n-Nuzamâ (İnceleme-Metin), ed. Rıdvan Canım, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı (e-book), 2018, p. 101 (entry on Sultan Bâyezîd).

Online sources