Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: eleven-syllable syllabic metre

Bu Ledün İlmini ârifler bilir
Okur amma anlayamaz nicesi
Kaçan kim bir kimse ustazı bulur
Bil üstazdır ilm-i kayp hocası
Evvelâ Eliften başlar okutur
Cim’i Lam’dan dersin verir şakıtır
Hattı üstüvada yedi ayet bakıdır
Yirmisekiz harftir anın hecesi
Çar anasın bist-i Heşt’de oldu zarp
Buna derler fatiha Ümmül kitap
Zahir ba’tın bundan çıkar her hesap
Mecmâ’yı A’lemin ruh derecesi
Bu ilmin mahzeni Şah-ı Velayet
Yüzondört surenin aslı tamamet
Altıbin altıyüz altmış altı ayet
Ahmed’e bahş olundu Mi’raç gecesi
Ey FEDAYİ Adem fazlı nicedir
Kelamullah hattı üstüva hecedir
Yaratılmış cümlesinden yücedir
Mânada müşteki yiğit kocası

In English

1. This "ledün" knowledge, the hidden knowledge that comes from God's presence, is known to the gnostics; many read but cannot understand. Whenever someone finds his master, know that this master is the teacher of the knowledge of the unseen.

2. He first teaches reading starting from Alif; he gives the lesson of Jim and of Lam and makes the letters speak. In the "hatt-ı istivâ" seven verses abide; its spelling is twenty-eight letters.

3. The four mother elements were multiplied by twenty-eight (the reading of this line is not certain); this they call the Fatiha, the Mother of the Book. Every reckoning of the outward and the inward comes from it; it is the place where the universe gathers, the rank of the soul.

4. The treasury of this knowledge is Ali, the Shah of Sainthood; the origin of the hundred and fourteen suras lies wholly in him. Six thousand six hundred and sixty-six verses were bestowed on Ahmad (the Prophet Muhammad) on the night of the Ascension.

5. O Fedâî, how great is the "fazl", the excellence of Adam? The word of God is spelled out in the "hatt-ı istivâ". He is higher than all created beings; the last line ("Mânada müşteki yiğit kocası") appears corrupt in the transmission and its meaning is not clear.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

It is a koşma of five quatrains based on the eleven-syllable metre; in some lines the syllable count falters. The last lines of the quatrains rhyme in the words "nicesi, hecesi, derecesi, gecesi, kocası"; in the first quatrain the first and third lines ("bilir, bulur") rhyme with each other, and in the following ones the first three lines rhyme together. The pen name appears at the beginning of the last quatrain. In the source's typesetting the word "ârifler" in the first line is misprinted as "ârifier"; it has been corrected in the text. Some lines of the poem cannot be read with confidence, because they are built in a dense terminology based on calculations with letters and numbers and because there are corruptions in the transmission; the reservations in the modern Turkish rendering reflect this.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The poem is a dense example of Fedâî Baba's poems based on letter symbolism. Cafer Özdemir writes that the poet expressed some deep subjects through letters so that only the initiated would understand them, and that this approach, as İsmet Zeki Eyüpoğlu notes, passed into Bektashism from Hurufism. Here the lesson of hidden knowledge begins with Alif and continues with the letters Jim and Lam. Twenty-eight is the number of letters in the Arabic alphabet; seven is the number of verses in the Sura al-Fatiha, and one of the Fatiha's names is "Umm al-Kitab", the Mother of the Book. The poet mentions these numbers together with the "hatt-ı istivâ", the line dividing the human face down the middle, and thus sets up a correspondence between the essence of the Qur'an and the human face. The line "Âdemdir ümmü'l-Kur'an Sebü'l-mesânî", which Özdemir quotes from the same divan, states this idea directly: "Sab' al-Mathani", the other name of the Fatiha, is man himself.

In the fourth quatrain the treasury of all this knowledge is Ali, called the "Shah of Sainthood". A hundred and fourteen suras and six thousand six hundred and sixty-six verses express, by the traditional count, the whole of the Qur'an; the poet says that this whole was bestowed on the Prophet on the night of the Ascension. The phrase "Âdem fazlı" in the last quatrain expresses the excellence of man among created beings. The word "fazl" also evokes the name of Fazlullah, the founder of Hurufism; considered together with the line "Fazlın kulu müzahirden görünür" quoted by Özdemir, this evocation may be deliberate, but that is an interpretation.

Bibliography

Online sources