Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: 11'li hece ölçüsü
Gevherî tâbirdir Mustafa ismim
Bir katre meniden halk oldu cismim
Levh-i mahfuz üzre yazılmış resmim
Hikmet-i Hüda'ya uğradım geldim
In English
1. Gevherî is a way of speaking, that is, my pen name; my real name is Mustafa. My body was created from a single drop of fluid. My destiny and my likeness are written on the Preserved Tablet (Levh-i Mahfuz), where all things are inscribed beforehand. I came into this world by passing through the wisdom of God.
Literary and Historical Commentary
Structure of the Poem
The text we have is a single stanza of a koşma. The rest of the koşma is not given in the sources; since in minstrel poetry the pen name (mahlas) is usually spoken in the last stanza, this quatrain is very probably the close of the poem. The lines have eleven syllables each and pause after six and five syllables, as in "Gevherî tâbirdir / Mustafa ismim"; the metre is not stated in the source, and the syllable count is ours. The first three lines rhyme on the words "ismim, cismim, resmim": the sounds "-sm" form the rhyme and the possessive suffix "-im" acts as a redif (refrain word). The fourth line ends with "uğradım geldim"; in koşmas this last line of the stanza is the ayak (refrain line) that ties the poem to its other stanzas. The quatrain appears in M. Fuad Köprülü's book on Gevherî published in 1929, and Ali Berat Alptekin quotes it from that book. To whom and when it was spoken is not known.
Meaning and Figures of Speech
The quatrain is built on a self-introduction formula common in minstrel poetry. The poet first separates his name from his pen name: "tâbir" here means the way something is expressed, the name by which it is spoken; Gevherî is his name among the people and in poetry, and Mustafa is his real name. He then describes the creation of man in three stages. "Bir katre meni", a single drop, is the popular form of the Qur'anic verses stating that man was created from a drop of fluid, and it recalls the smallness of man's beginning. The "Levh-i mahfuz" is the Preserved Tablet on which everything is written before creation; what the poet calls his "resim" covers both his likeness and what is written on his brow, his fate. The last line closes this journey with an arrival: the poet has come into the world by passing through God's wisdom, by His decree.
The ascent through the lines is striking: name, body, fate and wisdom draw a line that widens from an ordinary statement of identity towards the mystery of creation. The contrast between "cisim" and "resim" serves this line too; one is the material body created from a drop, the other the spiritual likeness and destiny written in pre-eternity. Although the language is plain, compounds such as "levh-i mahfuz" and "hikmet-i Hüdâ" reflect the diction that Gevherî owed to his madrasa education and that the sources found heavy compared with his fellow minstrels.
Historical Context
The importance of this quatrain comes from its place in the debate over the poet's real name. Köprülü stated that Gevherî's name was Mustafa on the strength of this line alone. Nihad M. Çetin, who connects Gevherî with the town of Gümüş in the Amasya region and with Merzifon, likewise argues in his 1991 article that the poet's name was definitely Mustafa; the memory of the Gevherîzâde family of Gümüş agrees with this name. On the other hand, in a text published by Orhan Yavuz the same lines appear with small changes and without the pen name, in a quatrain beginning "Kendime kefilim Ali'dir ismim"; the second and third lines have changed places and "eyleyip" stands in place of "halk oldu". Alptekin, pointing to this similarity between the lines giving the names Mustafa and Ali, thinks the quatrains may have been altered by copyists. Elçin and Sakaoğlu, relying on another quatrain, take the poet's name to be Mehmed. For this reason the quatrain cannot by itself prove either the poet's name or the family tradition of Gümüş; its value lies in being one of the main texts on which the debate rests.
Bibliography
Primary sources
- M. Fuad Köprülü, Türk Saz Şairlerine Ait Metinler ve Tetkikler: XVII. Asır Saz Şairlerinden Gevherî, Istanbul: Türkiyat Enstitüsü Neşriyatı, 1929, p. 191 (as cited by Alptekin 2015).
Academic studies
- Nurettin Albayrak, "Gevherî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 14, Istanbul 1996, pp. 43-44. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/gevheri
- Orhan Yavuz, "Gevherî'nin Şiirleri, Gevherî'ye Ait Olan Şüpheli ve Yayımlanmamış Şiirler", Türk Dünyası Araştırmaları, 27, 1983, pp. 139-155 (as cited by Alptekin 2015).
Books
- Ali Berat Alptekin, "Gevherî", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 13.04.2015 (updated 07.12.2020). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/gevheri
- Nihad M. Çetin, "Gevherî'ye Dâir Birkaç Not", Prof. Dr. Bekir Kütükoğlu'na Armağan, Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Basımevi, 1991, pp. 21-23 (as cited by Albayrak 1996).
Online sources
