Edîb, Kıt‘a 1: Esâs-ı şer'ini bânî-i kudret

Kıt‘a 1 — Esâs-ı şer'ini bânî-i kudret öyle yapmış kim

Amasya05 Editorial Board • Editor: Mevlüt Erdem Öztürk • 01 October 2026 • Updated: 13 October 2026 • 3 min reading

Two couplets surviving from Edîb of Lâdik's poems in praise of the Prophet: the edifice of the law that ruin cannot topple and a talisman-sealed treasure reason cannot open.

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün mefâîlün

Esâs-ı şer'ini bânî-i kudret öyle yapmış kim
Zafer bulmaz ana dest-i fenâ gâyetde muhkemdir

Hıred kufl-i der-i ahkâmını feth etmeden âciz
Hakîm-i Mutlak'ın sun'uyla bir genc-i mutalsamdır

In English

1. The Builder of all power has laid the foundation of his law in such a way that the hand of annihilation cannot overcome it; it is utterly firm.

2. Reason is powerless to open the lock on the door of its rulings; by the art of the All-Wise it is a treasure sealed with a talisman.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The two couplets speak in the language of a building and of a treasure. In the first, the sacred law is a structure whose foundation God has laid: "esâs" is foundation, "bânî" builder, "muhkem" firm, and the "dest-i fenâ", the hand of annihilation that destroys all things, cannot reach it. The second couplet carries the image to a door. There is a lock on the door of the rulings, and reason, the tool man trusts most, cannot open it. Behind it lies a "genc-i mutalsam", a treasure sealed by a talisman. In old belief precious treasures were guarded by talismans, and a hand that did not know the charm could not touch them; the poet uses this belief to say that the divine rulings cannot be fully grasped by reason. "Hakîm-i Mutlak", the All-Wise, is a name of God, but since "hakîm" also means philosopher, its placing in the same couplet as the helplessness of reason looks like a deliberate choice.

The piece consists of four lines, of which only the second and fourth rhyme ("muhkemdir", "mutalsamdır"); it may therefore be a kıt‘a (short poem without an opening rhyming couplet) or two couplets from a longer poem of praise other than its opening. The possessive in "şer'ini", "his law", leaves it to an earlier couplet to say who is meant; the Prophet's name does not appear in these two. Hüsameddin introduces the piece as "from his Nuût-ı Nebeviyye", that is, from his poems in praise of the Prophet. Hüsameddin gives no metre; that the lines fit the mefâîlün pattern is our identification.

The na't, the poem in praise of the Prophet, is the religious genre that follows the poems on God's unity and the prayers in a divan; since Edîb is said to have had a divan, these couplets may have come from the na'ts at its opening; unless the divan is found, this cannot be confirmed. Edîb's life, bound up with his fellow townsman Hâfız Mehmed Efendi, is told in Edîb Mehmed Efendi of Lâdik.