Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün

Bir perî peyker melek sîmâ güzellerden güzel
Ḥüsn-i a‘lâ ḳâmeti bâlâ güzellerden güzel

In English

1. Fairy-faced, angel-featured, the fairest of the fair; supreme in beauty, tall of stature, the fairest of the fair.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is recorded in the cönk as a "dîvân" or "dîvânî". In minstrel literature this name is given to poems composed in aruz, in couplets like the ghazal, and sung to the saz. Because Hakverdioğlu's article publishes only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we know only the opening couplet of this poem. The refrain is "güzellerden güzel"; the rhyme is the "-â" sound in "sîmâ / bâlâ". The identification of the metre is ours; as is usual in the aruz poems of folk poets, some syllables may not fit the pattern exactly. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet is a eulogy that describes the beloved through a chain of epithets. "Perî peyker" (fairy-faced) and "melek sîmâ" (angel-featured) speak of the beloved as superhumanly beautiful; "hüsn-i a'lâ" (supreme beauty) and "kâmeti bâlâ" (tall of stature) give two aspects of that beauty, the face and the figure. In divan poetry a tall stature is a measure of beauty matched with the cypress. The refrain "güzellerden güzel" (fairest of the fair) is a folk expression recalling Arabic superlative patterns, and in every couplet it repeats that the beloved surpasses all beauties. Such strings of epithets are easy to remember when sung with the saz in minstrel sessions.

Historical Context

The poem is recorded under the name of Erzurumlu Emrah in the Merzifon Cönkü, a manuscript miscellany held in Metin Hakverdioğlu's own library and introduced by him in 2019. The cönk contains eleven of Emrah's poems, three in syllabic metre and eight in aruz. In cönks and miscellanies Emrah's poems have become mixed with those of Ercişli Emrah and of his apprentice Tokatlı Nûrî; the record in the cönk is therefore not by itself conclusive proof of authorship. For the poet's connection with Merzifon and his other poems in the cönk, see the page on Erzurumlu Emrah. The poem is on page 98 of the cönk and page 547 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.

Bibliography

Online sources