Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilün

Nāme kim nāmını yazmış bendenüñ sulṭān aña
Ġuṣṣadan āzādelıḳ ḫaṭṭı olur ‘unvān aña
Her elif ki anda var naḳş-ı ḳad-i cānān gibi
Cān içinde yiri var olsun fedā yüz cān aña
Belki her ḥarfi sevād-ı dīde-i cāndur anuñ
Noḳṭalar kim anda düşmiş görinür insān aña
Aynı nergis hāsı ġonce her elif bir serv-i nāz
Yaraşur dirsem bu yüzden Ravża-i Rıḍvān aña
Gözlerüm oldı münevver ol sevād-ı nāmeden
Toz yirine ṭūṭiyā ṣaçmış meger cānān aña
Ḫātemī bilüp şeb-i hecre giriftār olduġum
Raḥm idüp yār eylemiş ta‘vīẕ ile dermān aña

In English

1. The heading of the letter on which the sultan wrote the name of this servant of his becomes a deed of release from sorrow. ("Ḫaṭṭ" means both handwriting and a written document; the name at the head of the letter is likened to a deed of manumission that frees the poet from grief.)

2. Every letter alif in it is like a picture of the beloved's stature; its place is within the soul, and may a hundred souls be sacrificed for it. (Alif, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, is a straight, slender stroke; in divan poetry it is compared to the beloved's cypress-like stature.)

3. Indeed, each of its letters is the black of the soul's eye, and the dots that have fallen within them appear as the pupil of that eye. ("Sevād" is both the black of the ink and the dark of the eye; "insān" is used here in the sense of "insān-ı ‘ayn", the pupil of the eye.)

4. Its letter ‘ayn is a narcissus, its letter hā a rosebud, and every alif a graceful cypress; so if I call it the garden of Paradise, the name suits it. (By its shape and its name the letter ‘ayn recalls the eye, and in divan poetry the narcissus is likewise an eye; the round letter hā recalls an unopened bud. "Ravża-i Rıḍvān", the garden of Rıdvân, the keeper of Paradise, is Paradise itself.)

5. My eyes were brightened by the black writing of that letter; it seems that where one sprinkles dust, the beloved sprinkled collyrium on it. (Fine dust used to be sprinkled over writing so that the ink would dry; tūtiyā is the collyrium applied to the eyes and believed to brighten them.)

6. Knowing that Hâtemî had fallen captive to the night of separation, the beloved took pity and made the letter an amulet, a cure for his pain.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of six couplets (beyit), written in the metre "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün" of the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre). The metre is not stated in the biographical anthology; it has been deduced from the scansion of the couplets. The redif (refrain word) is "aña", and the rhyme is built on the sound "-ān" in the words sulṭān, ‘unvān, cān, insān, Rıḍvān, cānān and dermān. The first couplet is the matla, whose two lines rhyme with each other, and the poet's pen name (mahlas) "Ḫātemī" appears in the last couplet. Since no divan of Müeyyedzâde has come down to us, the ghazal rests on its record in the Meşâ‘irü'ş-şu‘arâ of his grandson Âşık Çelebi. According to the manuscript variants shown in Filiz Kılıç's edition, in three manuscripts of the biographical anthology (tezkire) the pen name appears as "ḥālümi" (my state) instead of "Ḫātemī". Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi quotes only the last two couplets and in the final line gives the reading "ta‘zîb" (tormenting) instead of "ta‘vīẕ" (amulet). As this reading does not fit the sense of the couplet, Âşık Çelebi's text has been followed here. TEİS also quotes the whole ghazal from Âşık Çelebi, with the forms "Nâme ki" and "ta’vîz".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The subject of the ghazal is a letter. The poet receives the letter sent to him as if it were a part of the beloved, and praises it letter by letter, even dot by dot. This rests on an old likeness that divan poetry draws between script and beauty: the beloved's stature is compared to the letter alif, the mouth to the letter mim, the eyebrow to the letter nun. Hâtemî turns this likeness around. Once the alifs in the letter become the beloved's stature, the letter ‘ayn an eye like a narcissus, the letter hā a rosebud and every alif a cypress, the written page turns into a garden of Paradise. The comparisons in the fourth couplet are similes (teşbih) set one after another, and there is a clear congruence of images (tenasüp) among narcissus, rosebud and cypress.

The third couplet is the most skilful in the poem. The word "sevâd" denotes both the black ink of the writing and the dark of the eye. The word "insân" recalls in its first sense a human being and, in its use in divan poetry, the pupil of the eye, called "insân-ı ayn". So the letters become the dark of an eye and their dots the pupil of that eye; both words carry a double entendre (tevriye). The fifth couplet continues the image of the eye. In earlier times fine dust was sprinkled over writing so that the ink would not smudge. The poet says that instead of this dust the beloved sprinkled tûtiyâ, the collyrium applied to the eyes and believed to brighten them; this is why his eyes were brightened by reading the letter.

The couplets at either end of the ghazal describe the effect of the letter. In the matla, the name at the head of the letter is a "ḫaṭṭ", both a piece of writing and a deed of release, which frees the poet from grief. In the final couplet (makta) the beloved takes pity on the lover left in the night of separation and makes the letter an amulet that cures his pain. The language of the ghazal draws on the familiar relation between lover and beloved: the writer is the "bende", the servant, and the sender of the letter is the "sulṭān". The word "sultan" here has two senses; in divan poetry it is a title of the beloved, while in the Ottoman world princes too were called "sultan".

Historical Context

Âşık Çelebi says that Müeyyedzâde wrote this ghazal "Sulṭān Aḥmed'den kendüye gelen mektūb muḳābelesinde", that is, in reply to a letter that came to him from Şehzade Ahmed (Prince Ahmed). Kınalızâde too quotes the last two couplets as being from the "cevâb-nâme", the reply, that he sent to Sultan Ahmed. Prince Ahmed was the son of Bayezid II and for many years during his father's reign served as sanjak governor (sanjak-bey) of Amasya. Müeyyedzâde, for his part, was a native of Amasya and had spent his youth at Bayezid's princely court in Amasya. The sources do not give the date of the letter or the place from which it was sent; it is therefore not known in which period of Ahmed's years in Amasya the ghazal was written.

The ghazal also matters as a document of the relationship between the two. According to Kınalızâde and Âşık Çelebi, in the last years of Bayezid II, when the Janissaries plundered the houses of statesmen regarded as partisans of Sultan Ahmed, Müeyyedzâde's house too was raided and he withdrew from the office of kadıasker (chief military judge). Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar, in his Amasya Tarihi, likewise links this dismissal to his being thought in 917 (1511) a "tarafdâr", a supporter, of placing "Amasya vâlîsi Şehzâde Sultân Ahmed", the governor of Amasya Prince Ahmed, on the throne. Under Selim I, envious rivals wrote papers accusing him of being "Sulṭān Aḥmedī", a partisan of Ahmed, and threw them into the palace. This ghazal, which addresses the prince as "my sultan" and treats his letter as a deed of release and an amulet, accords with what the biographers say of the closeness between them. That it was written to Ahmed is itself a literary witness to this closeness.

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