Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Zülf-i sünbül bize hattın dişlerin dürr-i Aden
Hoş yaraşmış rûy-ı hûb sünbül ü tarf-ı çemen

In English

1. Your locks are hyacinth, your down to us (the edge of the meadow), your teeth pearls of Aden. Hyacinth and the edge of the meadow suit the fair face well. (The couplet is a name riddle; according to the source the hidden name is "Hasan".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

A muammâ is a poetic riddle that hides a name inside a couplet by means of clues pointing to its letters. The reader finds the hidden name by working from the meaning of the words, the shape of the letters or their numerical (ebced) value. Divan poets regarded the genre as a display of skill, and the muammâ treatises of great poets were read and commented on. Eşref is recorded as having written a commentary on Molla Câmî's treatise on the muammâ; this couplet shows that he approached the genre as a poet as well as a commentator. In İsmail Hakkı Aksoyak's dictionary article the couplet is headed "Muammâ Be-nâm-ı Hasan", a riddle on the name Hasan.

The source does not show how the riddle is solved, and no solution has been attempted here. In the muammâ tradition the word "tooth" is known often to point to the toothed letter "sîn" (س), and this letter occurs in the name Hasan; but since it remains unclear how the others are obtained, this is only a possibility.

Set aside its riddle, the couplet can also be read as a description. The first line names three beauties of the beloved: locks, down and teeth; the second gives the counterparts of the first two: hyacinth for the locks, "tarf-ı çemen", the edge of the meadow, for the down. Listing things first and their counterparts afterwards is the figure called leff ü neşr. Likening the down on the beloved's cheek to a greenish strip of grass is a familiar image of divan poetry. Eşref's commentary on Câmî and his other works are listed in Eşref Abdurrahman Efendi of Merzifon.

Bibliography

Online sources