Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Leyli-i zülfüñden olalı bu sevdālar bize
Uydılar Mecnūn gibi āhū-yı ṣaḥrālar bize
Nāle ḳılur her nefes ṭaġlar fıġānum ışidüp
Keff-i mevcile dögünür cümle deryālar bize
Düşde gördüm zülfüñi oldum perīşān ‘āḳıbet
Gör ne te’s̱īr eyledi āḫir bu rü’yālar bize
Yüzın örter benden ol māhuñ bu zülf-i ‘anberīn
Ne ḳara gün oldı ol zülf-i semen-sālar bize
Fitneden fāriġ yürürken ey Baṣīrī āh kim
Başladı başdan ‘itāb ol çeşm-i şehlālar bize

In English

1. Ever since these passions came upon us from your Leylâ-dark locks, the gazelles of the desert have followed us as they followed Majnun. (Majnun, driven into the desert by his love for Leylâ, befriended the gazelles. In Arabic the name "Leylâ" also recalls the night; "sevdâ" is a word for both love and something associated with blackness.)

2. Hearing my cries, the mountains moan with every breath; all the seas beat their breasts for us with the palms of their waves.

3. I saw your locks in a dream and in the end became distracted; see what effect these dreams have had on us at last. (Whoever sees the dishevelled locks in a dream becomes as distracted as they are.)

4. That moon-faced one hides her face from me with these ambergris-scented locks; what a black day those jasmine-scented locks have brought us. (The face is likened to the day and the locks to night; the locks covering the face are also linked with the idiom "kara gün", black day.)

5. O Basîrî, alas, while we went our way free of strife, those dark-blue eyes began to reproach us once again. (In divan poetry the beloved's eye is imagined as a being that stirs up strife.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets in the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün". The edition does not state the metre; the pattern emerges from scansion. The redif (refrain word) is "bize", to us, and the rhyme is the sound "-âlar": sevdālar, ṣaḥrālar, deryālar, rü’yālar, semen-sālar, şehlālar. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal stands at the head of the poems, as number I, in Ahmet Kartal's 2000 article "Basîrî ve Türkçe Şiirleri". Kartal's text is based on the Turkish poems at the end of the Persian divan that Basîrî arranged in his own hand (Süleymaniye Library, Âşir Efendi no. 292). The word "Yüzın" at the beginning of the fourth couplet is so set in the edition; it should be read "yüzin". To whom and when the ghazal was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens with an allusion (telmih) to the story of Leylâ and Majnun. Majnun lost his reason for love of Leylâ, wandered into the deserts and befriended the gazelles there. Basîrî puts himself in Majnun's place: passions have come upon him from the beloved's "Leylâ-like" locks, and the gazelles of the desert have followed him too. That the name "Leylâ" recalls the night in Arabic suits the black locks; the word "sevdâ" carries together the sense of love and that of an illness associated in old medicine with black bile. The first couplet therefore sets up a subtle congruence of images (tenasüp) between locks, night and passion.

The second couplet says that the lover's cries move all of nature. The mountains moan as they repeat his voice in echo; the seas beat their breasts with the palms of their waves. Likening the echo in the mountains to a moan and the beating of the waves on the shore to a mourner's breast-beating is an example of both personification (teşhis) and poetic aetiology (hüsn-i talil). In the third couplet a link is drawn between the dishevelment of the locks and that of the lover: having seen the disordered locks in a dream, the lover has become as distracted as they. The words "rü'yâ" (dream) and "te'sîr" (effect) also bring to mind the interpretation of dreams.

The fourth couplet is the most subtle point of the ghazal. The beloved's face is like the moon and her locks like night; when the locks cover the face the moon cannot be seen. The poet expresses this image with the words "ne ḳara gün oldı", what a black day it was. "Kara gün" in Turkish means a day of disaster; but here it is also, literally, the face, the "day", being covered by the black locks. The use of an idiom in both its figurative and literal senses gives the couplet a double entendre (tevriye). Describing the locks as "ambergris-scented" and "jasmine-scented" also sets up a contrast between scent and colour: the locks are black, but their scent is like jasmine. In the closing couplet the lover says that while he lived far from strife, the beloved's dark-blue eyes began to reproach him again. The word "başdan" can be read both as "once again" and as "from the start".

Historical Context

Kartal states that Basîrî's Turkish poems are found together at the end of his divan, comprising one kaside, forty-six ghazals and some kıt‘as and couplets. In the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam Mehmed Çavuşoğlu writes that after spending time at the Akkoyunlu court and in Herat Basîrî came to the Ottoman lands, that at first he wrote in his own Azeri dialect, which the biographers called "Acemâne", in the Persian manner, and then began to use the Turkish of Istanbul, although traces of the Azeri dialect can be seen here and there in the poems he recorded in his own hand. In which years the ghazal was written is not known.

Bibliography

Online sources