Original Arabic Text

Metre: basît (müstef'ilün fâ'ilün müstef'ilün fa'ilün); the identification is ours, and the metre falters in some lines

The Arabic-script text in Kalaycı and Tan's article (footnote 209):

لا تطمئن بدار أنت ساكنها
لا تبعن بها حبًّا يدانيها
فاركب سفينة بحر الصبر وقل
فاصنع من الصبر فلكًا كي يلاقيها
فاسلك من البحر بسم الله مجراها
إذا جرى الفلك بسم الله مجراها
فقلت خلّوا سبيلي لا أبًا لكم
فكل ما قدّر الرحمن مفعول

Reading in Latin script (we supply the reading; the second line of the first couplet is uncertain):

Lâ tatma'inne bi-dârin ente sâkinuhâ
Lâ tebî'an bihâ habben yudânîhâ
Fe-rkeb sefînete bahri's-sabri ve-kul
Fe-sna' mine's-sabri fulken key yulâkîhâ
Fe-sluk mine'l-bahri bismillâhi mecrâhâ
İzâ ceri'l-fulku bismillâhi mecrâhâ
Fe-kultu hallû sebîlî lâ eben lekum
Fe-kullu mâ kaddera'r-Rahmânu mef'ûlu

In English

1. Do not trust the abode you dwell in, thinking it lasting; do not buy there a seed that will go to waste.

2. Board the ship of the sea of patience and set out; build a ship of patience that will bring you there.

3. Take a way across the sea in the name of God; when the ship sails, its course is in the name of God.

4. Then I say: Get out of my way, may you have no father; all that the Merciful has decreed will come to pass.

The translation follows the Turkish version in the article: "Do not think a land you dwell in eternal / Do not buy with it a seed that will go to waste // Board the ship of the sea of patience and set out / Make a ship of patience that will carry you there // Take a road to travel by sea in the name of God / If the ship sails in the name of God and safely." The fourth couplet it renders as "Then I say: O base ones, get out of my way". Here "lâ ebâ lekum" is an Arabic imprecation meaning "may you have no father".

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Borrowed Last Couplet

The last couplet of the piece is identical, letter for letter, with a couplet of the ode that Ka'b b. Zuhayr presented to the Prophet, known as "Bânet Suâd" from its opening words: "Fe-kultu hallû sebîlî lâ ebâ lekum / fe-kullu mâ kaddera'r-Rahmânu mef'ûlu." In the ode Ka'b tells how, under threat of death, his friends turned away from him, and with this couplet he says to them, "get out of my way, what God has decreed will be." Inserting a well-known couplet of another poet into one's own poem is known in classical literature as tazmin. The article does not name the source of the couplet; the match with the ode was made for this page. Here the tazmin also creates a mismatch: while the first three couplets end in the rhyme "-hâ", the fourth carries the "-lu" rhyme of Ka'b's ode. The metre stays the same while the rhyme changes. This may also suggest that the piece is less a regular kıta from a single hand than a compilation jotted on a manuscript page.

Sea and Ship

The four couplets move forward through a single metaphor of a voyage. The world is an abode in which one lives but which one must not think lasting. The way to escape it is patience: patience is both a sea and the ship that crosses that sea. The third couplet draws on the Quran. In verse 41 of the sura Hûd, as the flood begins, Noah says to his family, "Embark on it; in the name of God be its course and its mooring." The phrase "bismillâhi mecrâhâ" comes from this verse and is repeated in both lines of the couplet. The ship thus calls Noah's ark to mind: only a ship that sails in the name of God saves one from the flood, that is, from the calamity of the world. The voice of the last couplet, "get out of my way", is the end of this voyage; whoever boards the ship of patience submits to decree, heedless of those who block his path.

Where It Was Found and Its Attribution

The piece is on the title page (zahriye), the first blank page, of a copy of Emrullah Mehmed Efendi's notes on el-Eşbâh ve'n-nezâir in the Süleymaniye Library (Mehmed Nuri Efendi, no. 182). Kalaycı and Tan say that the poem "is attributed to him", but that it is not clear whether it came directly from his pen. In other words, the note in the manuscript links the poem to Emrullah; whose handwriting the poem is in is unknown. That the last couplet is taken from Ka'b b. Zuhayr complicates the attribution further: Emrullah may have compiled a piece from the words of others, may have written three couplets and added a famous couplet at the end, or may have noted down a piece entirely by someone else. The article leaves the question of attribution open; it is left open here as well.

That this piece, associated with the name of a scholar who, as Hüsameddin writes, disliked the people of the Sufi orders and is known to have used harsh language in his marginal notes, ends with patience, trust in God and a voice saying "get out of my way", agrees with what is told of his character. This agreement cannot be taken as proof of attribution. Emrullah Efendi's life is on the page Seyrekzâde Emrullah Mehmed Efendi.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

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