Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Heading (Vâzıh's record): PEDER-İ MERḤŪM LİSĀNINDAN TĀRĪḪ-İ VİLĀDET-İ FAḲĪR-İ ḤAḲĪRDİR

Metre: fe‘ilātün / fe‘ilātün / fe‘ilātün / fe‘ilün

Sāl-i mīlādıñı itmek diler iseñ ma‘lūm
Naẓar it gel hele tārīḫiñe cānım oġlum (1177)

In English

1. If you wish to learn the year you were born, my dear son, come and look at your chronogram.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet addresses not a newborn child but a grown son who will one day wonder about the year of his birth. Kara Müftü İsmâil Hâtif Efendi, recording the birth of his son Mustafa, imagined him as someone who would read these lines in the future, and framed his words as "if you wish to know, look". The word "tārīḫiñe" (at your chronogram) in the second line tells the reader that the calculation is coming; the two words that follow, "cānım oġlum" (my dear son), are the calculation itself. In Babaarslan's edition the couplet is given in the "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün" pattern of the remel metre. It carries no pen name (mahlas); we know that it is Hâtif's only from the heading his son gave it.

The Abjad Calculation

When the words "cānım oġlum" are written in Arabic script as "جانم اوغلم", the abjad values of the letters are cim 3, elif 1, nun 50, mim 40 and elif 1, vav 6, gayın 1000, lam 30, mim 40; the total is 1177. This number matches the year written in brackets at the end of the line in the edition. The calculation rests on the assumption that the words were spelled this way in the manuscript; the manuscript itself has not been seen. The year 1177 runs from the summer of 1763 to the summer of 1764.

The real refinement of the couplet is that the chosen words serve as the chronogram. For a father, burying his son's year of birth in the words "my dear son" means hiding the number inside a term of affection; when the son works out the sum to learn his year, he finds the words his father spoke to him.

Historical Context

The couplet is the only piece to survive of the poems Hüsameddin says İsmâil Hâtif Efendi left ("eş'ârı vardı"), and it was preserved only through his son's record. Mustafa Vâzıh opens the chronograms section of his Dîvânçe, whose single copy, in his own hand, is at Ankara University, with this couplet. The words "peder-i merḥūm" (my late father) in the heading show that the record was made after the father's death in 1198 (1784); at least twenty-one years passed between the composition of the couplet and its entry in the Dîvânçe. On what occasion and where the father wrote the couplet, whether in the margin of a book or in a family record, is not known.

In 1177 İsmâil Efendi was teacher of the Sungurlu Madrasa in Amasya; he would be appointed mufti for the first time seven years later, in 1184. The same section of Vâzıh's Dîvânçe also contains the chronogram poem he wrote on his father's death; read together, the two chronograms, one recording a birth and the other a death, face each other across father and son. The same couplet is also published, as part of the Dîvânçe, on Vâzıh's Chronogram 1 page. For the poet's life, see the page Hâtif İsmâil Efendi.

Bibliography

Online sources