Original Text (Mixed Languages)

مهر شريف مهر تو يا سيد البشر
بر سينهء قيا شده كالنقش فى الحجر

Its reading in Latin letters is given as follows in Aysun Sungurhan's edition of Kınalızâde's anthology:

Mühr-i şerîf mihr-i tu yâ seyyide’l-beşer
Ber-sîne-i Kaya şude ke’n-nakşı fi’l-hacer

In English

1. O master of mankind (the Prophet Muhammad), your love is a noble seal; it is engraved on the breast of Kaya like an inscription carved in stone. The footnote translation by the editors of Hüsameddin's work continues after the address as follows: "Your seal is your noble sun (your face, bright as the sun and shedding light), and it is engraved on the breast like an inscription carved in stone."

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is a seal couplet, composed to be engraved on a statesman's seal. Its language is a mixture of Persian and Arabic; "mühr-i şerîf mihr-i tu" and "ber-sîne-i Kaya şude" are Persian, "yâ seyyide'l-beşer" and "ke'n-nakşı fi'l-hacer" Arabic. The use of two languages together in one couplet is called mülemma in divan poetry. The two lines rhyme in the words "beşer" and "hacer". The text in Arabic script is taken from Hüsameddin's work; since the letters come out in reverse order in the digital text of the work, the order has been corrected. The reading in Latin letters is from the edition of Kınalızâde; Hüsameddin does not give a reading of the couplet. The sources do not indicate the metre.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first figure of the couplet lies between "mühr" and "mihr". In Arabic script both are written the same way (مهر); one means seal, the other love and sun. The poet says that love for the Prophet is pressed like a seal on the breast of its owner; the owner's own seal also becomes the sign of this love. The editors of Hüsameddin's work understood "mihr" in the sense of sun, as the luminous face of the Prophet; both readings fit the dictionary meanings of the word.

In the second line the name of the seal's owner is set within the couplet. "Kaya" is both a personal name and, in Turkish, the word for rock or stone; the phrase "fi'l-hacer" (in stone) at the end of the line awakens this second meaning. Kaya's breast becomes a stone on which an inscription is carved; the seal stone itself is an engraved stone. The phrase "ke'n-nakşı fi'l-hacer" also recalls the well-known Arabic saying that knowledge learned at a young age is not erased, like an inscription carved in stone. These last two observations are our own.

Historical Context

According to Hüsameddin, the couplet was composed when Torumtayzâde Kaya Pasha of Amasya asked Edâyî for a couplet to engrave on his seal, and Kaya Pasha had it engraved on his seal. Kınalızâde mentions the couplet as written "for the seal of Kaya Beg, who was a sanjak governor (mîr-livâ)" and much admired among friends. In the third volume of his work Hüsameddin writes that in Rebiülahir 961 (March-April 1554) the sanjak governor Kaya Bey was appointed governor of the sanjak of Amasya, and that in Şaban 962 (June 1555), when Süleyman the Magnificent left Amasya, Kaya Bey went with him to Istanbul. It appears that the Kaya Bey of the seal couplet is this person, but the sources do not explicitly connect the two; nor is it known whether the couplet was composed during his governorship of Amasya or later. For the poet's life see Edâyî Receb Bey.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources