Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: müstef‘ilün müstef‘ilün müstef‘ilün müstef‘ilün

Ehl-i ma‘ānī didiler itdükce ol māha naẓar
Lām-ı muṭavvel zülfine aġzına mīm-i muḫtaṣar
Rūşen ne yüzden olmasun merd-i cihān dil-ḫānesi
Kim nāveki zaḫmı anuñ her yañadan revzen açar
Gün yüzlülerden dūr olup ben dīdeden kevkeb dökem
Gök ḳarşuma geçmiş benüm her gice bir yanı ḳuçar
Çeşmüñdürür ‘ayn-ı belā zülfüñdürür lām-ı elem
Ḳaşuñdurur nūn-ı güneş aġzuñdurur mīm-i ḳamer
Miskīn Baṣīrī iy ne yirde baş ḳutara kim
Zülfüñ ucından her ṭaraf başına ġavġalar ḳopar

In English

1. Whenever the masters of meaning looked at that moon, they called his curl "the long lām" and his mouth "the short mīm". (Among the Arabic letters lām is long and curved, mīm small and round. "Mutavvel" (the long) and "Muhtasar" (the short) are also the names of two famous textbooks of rhetoric, the science of meânî, read in the madrasas.)

2. How should the heart-house of a man of the world not be bright, when the wound of his arrow opens a window on every side? (The wounds his arrow opens are likened to windows letting light into the house of the heart.)

3. Far from the sun-faced ones I shed stars from my eyes; the sky has come to stand before me and every night embraces one side of me. (The stars are tears; the night sky stands beside the lover like a companion filled with his tears. The exact meaning of the line is not certain.)

4. Your eye is the very essence (the "ayn") of calamity, your curl the lām of grief; your brow is the nūn of the sun, your mouth the mīm of the moon. ("Ayn" means both eye and the essence of a thing, and is a letter shaped like an eye; lām is likened to the curl, the bow-shaped nūn to the brow, the small mīm to the mouth. The word "elem" (grief) contains a lām, "güneş" (sun) a nūn, and "kamer" (moon) a mīm.)

5. Where can poor Basîrî save his head, when quarrels break out over his head on every side from the tip of your curl? (The idioms "to save one's head" and "quarrels break out over one's head" are set against each other.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets in the recez family of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "müstef‘ilün müstef‘ilün müstef‘ilün müstef‘ilün"; the edition does not state the metre, which emerges from scansion. The ghazal has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme rests on the sound "-ar": naẓar, muḫtaṣar, açar, ḳuçar, ḳamer, ḳopar. "Ḳamer" in the fourth couplet joins the rhyme with the sound "-er". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is number XLI in Ahmet Kartal's edition and runs across pages 93 and 94 of the edition. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The most distinctive feature of the ghazal is its letter similes. In divan poetry the shapes of the Arabic letters are likened to features of the beautiful face: the long, curving lām to the hair, the small round mīm to the mouth, the bow-like nūn to the brow, the eye-shaped ayn to the eye. Basîrî uses this tradition intensively in the first and fourth couplets. In the first couplet those who make the comparison are the "ehl-i ma‘ānī", the masters of meaning. The phrase also denotes those versed in the science of meânî, a branch of rhetoric. That these scholars call the curl "lām-ı mutavvel" and the mouth "mîm-i muhtasar" is a double entendre (tevriye): two famous books on rhetoric by Sa‘deddin et-Teftâzânî bear the titles el-Mutavvel and el-Muhtasar. El-Mutavvel is a commentary on Hatîb el-Kazvînî's Telhîsü'l-Miftâh and was read as a textbook in Ottoman madrasas; el-Muhtasar is its abridgement. So the line can be read both literally, as "long lām, short mīm", and as the titles of madrasa books.

The fourth couplet carries on the same game with a four-part series. The eye is "ayn-ı belâ"; "ayn" means both eye and the essence, the very self of a thing, so the eye becomes calamity itself. The curl is "lâm-ı elem": the long letter lām is inside the word elem, grief. The brow is "nûn-ı güneş", the mouth "mîm-i kamer"; nūn is among the letters of the word güneş (sun) and mīm among those of kamer (moon). The meeting of sun and moon in the same couplet turns the face into a sky. Letter play of this kind may count as an example against Mehmed Çavuşoğlu's judgement of Basîrî that "the artful games played on meaning by most of his contemporaries are seldom found in him".

The two couplets in the middle of the ghazal are more emotional. In the second couplet the wounds opened by the beloved's arrow open windows in the house of the heart and the house is lit; being wounded is seen as attaining light. In the third couplet the lover, on nights far from the sun-faced beauties, sheds tears like stars from his eyes. The sky too stands before him with its stars and embraces one side of him. The exact meaning of the line is not clear; it may be that the sky, filled with the lover's tears, keeps him company. In the last couplet the word "baş" (head) recurs in two idioms: to save one's head and to have quarrels break out over one's head. The beloved's tangled curl is thought of as the place where the quarrel starts.

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