Original Arabic Text

Metre: Vâfir (mufâ‘aletün mufâ‘aletün fe‘ûlün)

جنابك مثل روضات الجنان
و منك ينال غايات الأمانى

Cenâbuke mislü ravzâti'l-cinânî
Ve minke yünâlü gâyâtü'l-emânî

حللت من المكارم فى ذراها
ففيها انت كالسبع المثانى

Halelte mine'l-mekârimi fî zürâhâ
Fe-fîhâ ente ke's-seb'i'l-mesânî

In English

1. Your presence is like the gardens of Paradise; through you the utmost of hopes are attained.

2. You have settled upon the summits of noble qualities; among them you are like the Seven Oft-Repeated verses (the Fâtiha).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Whose Poem

These four lines are not known for certain to be a poem by İnepazarlızâde İsmâil Hakkı Efendi. The kıt‘a stands in the introduction of the Müzekkiretü'l-Evkâf, the treatise he presented to Sultan Abdülmecid, under the bare heading "Kıt‘a"; no poet is named. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar copied the treatise from İsmâil Hakkı's own handwriting and still says that he could not find his Turkish and Arabic poems; so he did not count this kıt‘a as one of them. It was a common practice for authors of treatises to place other people's verses in their introductions. On the other hand, it would be quite natural for a writer said to have composed Arabic poetry to add a quatrain of his own. A search found the kıt‘a in no other source.

Text and Reading

Because the Arabic letters are garbled in the digital text of Amasya Tarihi, the kıt‘a has been read from the page image of the e-book. Since the edition gives no reading in Latin letters, the one offered here is our own. The quatrain fits the vâfir metre of Arabic prosody, and all its lines rhyme on the sound "-ânî". The editors of the edition give a translation in a footnote that begins "O noble Prophet, you are like the gardens in the Paradises".

To Whom It Was Addressed

The translation in the footnote addresses the kıt‘a to the Prophet. The flow of the treatise allows another reading as well. Just before the kıt‘a, the sentence of praise to God and blessing on the Prophet closes with the words "for the sake of our Lord". The sentence that follows the kıt‘a begins "Müfâd-ı âlîsi", "its lofty meaning", and names the person on whose brow that meaning shines: "es-Sultân ibnü's-Sultân es-Sultân Abdülmecid Hân". Read in this order, the kıt‘a opens the section in praise of the sultan, and Abdülmecid is the one addressed. Both readings are possible; the text is not explicit.

The comparison in the last line is the weightiest phrase of the kıt‘a. "Es-seb‘u'l-mesânî", the "seven oft-repeated" verses mentioned in the Qur'an (al-Hijr 15:87), is usually explained as the Fâtiha. The one praised stands at the summit of the virtues as the Fâtiha stands at the opening of the Book, the essence and head of them all. If read as addressed to the sultan, this means that a petition about endowments greets the ruler with the highest comparison it could find. The circumstances of the treatise and İsmâil Hakkı's life are dealt with in Hakkı İsmâil Efendi (İnepazarlızâde).

Bibliography

Online sources