Original Persian Text

Metre: mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün (hezec)

Ey dil zi ḳanā‘at egeret hest naṣībī
Yek cev nebuved pīş-i tu īn ḫırmen-i dünyā
V’er ibni Mü’eyyed ne-dehed manṣıbet āḫir
E’r-rızḳ ‘alā’llah tebārek ve te‘ālā

In English

1. O heart, if you have any share of contentment, this threshing heap of the world is not worth even a grain of barley in your eyes.

2. And if the son of Müeyyed gives you no office, in the end sustenance belongs to God; blessed is He and exalted. (The last line is in Arabic. "İbn-i Müeyyed" is the Arabic equivalent of the name Müeyyedzâde.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a kıt‘a (fragment) of two couplets written in Persian; its last line is in Arabic. Only the second lines of the couplets rhyme: dünyā, te‘ālā. The metre is the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "mef‘ūlü mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlü fe‘ūlün"; the biographical anthology (tezkire) does not state the metre, which emerges from scansion, and the Arabic line also fits the same pattern. The kıt‘a is not among the Turkish poems in Basîrî's divan manuscript; today it is known from the Basîrî entry in Âşık Çelebi's Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ. In the F manuscript of the tezkire the second line of the first couplet reads "pīş ū īn" instead of "pīş-i tu īn". Filiz Kılıç translated the kıt‘a into Turkish in a footnote to her edition; the translation here rests on the same sense as her interpretation.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet of the kıt‘a is a counsel on contentment. The poet addresses his own heart: for one who has a share of contentment the whole world is a "ḫırmen", a heap on the threshing floor, and that heap is not worth even a single grain of barley in his eyes. The contrast in size between the heap and the grain of barley conveys the worthlessness of worldly goods through a concrete image from farming. In the second couplet the counsel is suddenly tied to a particular person: even if "İbn-i Mü'eyyed", the son of Müeyyed, gives the poet no office, sustenance belongs to God.

The real point of the kıt‘a lies in the Arabic last line. "Er-rızku ‘alallāh", sustenance belongs to God, is a familiar saying of trust in God that recalls the Qur'anic verses on sustenance; the following "tebāreke ve te‘ālā" is a formula of praise spoken when God's name is mentioned. The poet meets a chief judge's refusal to give him a post with a sacred phrase. On the surface this is an expression of submission, but read on a slip of paper left under Müeyyedzâde's cushion it carries a subtle reproach: the chief judge who hands out offices is not the true owner of sustenance. Closing a Persian kıt‘a with an Arabic phrase is also like answering a learned chief judge in his own language, the language of scholarship.

Historical Context

Âşık Çelebi tells the story of the kıt‘a. When Basîrî first arrived Müeyyedzâde was chief judge (kazasker); Basîrî asked him for the administration of an endowment attached to the military class. Hearing that Müeyyedzâde always said "compassion is a disease, and we do not have it", Basîrî composed an opening couplet finding the beloved more merciless even than Müeyyedzâde. When Müeyyedzâde heard this couplet and took no notice, Basîrî wrote this kıt‘a and placed it under his "mesned", the cushion he sat on, and Müeyyedzâde saw it and read it. The opening couplet and the kıt‘a are thus two stages of the same incident: the first an open satire, the second a reproach that takes refuge in contentment.

Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi was from Amasya and in his youth belonged to the circle of Prince Bayezid, then governor of the sancak of Amasya. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi he became chief judge of Anatolia in 907 (1501); Ahmet Kartal, however, connects Basîrî's request for a post with the period around 897 (1491). Since these two dates do not agree, the year in which the incident took place is not certain.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Âşık Çelebi, Meşâ'irü'ş-şu'arâ, ed. Filiz Kılıç, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay., 2018 (e-book), p. 180, entry on Basîrî (translation: note 1891). ekitap.ktb.gov.tr

Academic studies

Books

Online sources