Original Persian Text

Metre: Mefā‘ilün Fe‘ilātün Mefā‘ilün Fa‘lün

Yekî be-huld-i berrîn şud ki sâl-i târîheş
Şeved ‘ıyân çü ber-âyed yekî zi-huld-i berîn

In English

1. Someone went to the highest paradise, so that the year of his date becomes plain when one comes out of "huld-i berîn". ("Huld-i berîn" means the loftiest paradise. The couplet is a chronogram: the year of death is found by subtracting "one" from the numerical value of the letters of these two words.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is a Persian chronogram (tarih) of a single couplet (beyit), written in the metre "mefā‘ilün fe‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fa‘lün" of the müctes family of aruz (quantitative metre). The metre is not stated in the biographical anthology; it has been deduced from the scansion of the couplet. Its two lines do not rhyme with each other. Composing a chronogram is the art of setting the year of an event within a phrase whose letters, when their numerical values in the ebced system are added up, give that year. The couplet appears only in the biographical anthology (tezkire) of Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi. In the edition the first line has "berrîn" and the second "berîn"; the metre requires the second form, but the text has been left here as it stands in the edition.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Kınalızâde introduces the couplet with the words "Ta’miye üsblûbı üzre ba’z-ı ‘ıyânun vefâtına bu târîhi hûb vâki’ olmışdur": it is a fine chronogram, in the ta‘miye manner, on the death of a notable. In a ta‘miye chronogram the year is not found by simply adding up the numerical value of the dating phrase; the poet makes the reader perform a further operation. In this couplet the operation is stated: the deceased has gone to Paradise, and his year becomes plain when "yekî", one, comes out of "huld-i berîn". The subtlety of the couplet lies in the use of the word "yekî" twice, in two different senses. In the first line "yekî" is "someone" who goes to Paradise, that is, the deceased; in the second it is the number "one" to be subtracted from the reckoning. The person who goes to Paradise and the number taken from the date are thus expressed by the same word; the dead man, as it were, steps out of the date and rises to Paradise. There is double entendre (tevriye) and play on words (cinas) in this expression.

Historical Context

Kınalızâde gives neither the name of the deceased nor the year of the chronogram. The ebced value of the words "huld-i berîn" (خلد برین) is 896; if one is subtracted from it, as the couplet indicates, the year 895 (1489-90) is obtained. But since the anthology does not carry out this calculation and the spelling of the word is given in two ways in the edition, this result should be regarded only as an attempted reading. Who the deceased was is also unknown. In his entry in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Hasan Aksoy notes that the ta‘miye chronograms Müeyyedzâde composed on the deaths of certain important persons are also of value. This couplet is the only example of those chronograms to have passed into the anthologies.

Bibliography

Online sources