Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Dün içre gelseyidi göŋlüme ħayâli anuŋ
Amâsiye gibi cânumda ġâret olayidi

In English

1. If only his image had come to my heart in the night, so that there might have been plunder in my soul as there was in Amasya.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This couplet comes from a ghazal (gazel) in Kadı Burhaneddin's divan and is quoted, with the reference KBD 71/16, in Nevzat Özkan's article on the place names in the divan. Since Muharrem Ergin's complete transcribed edition could not be consulted for this study, the whole ghazal cannot be given; the couplet is reproduced exactly in Özkan's transcription. The redif (refrain word) is "olayidi", and the rhyme is the sound "-âret" in the word "ġâret". The couplet Özkan quotes immediately afterwards, "Ħarâb ķıldı gözüŋ göŋlümüŋ Amâsiyesin" (KBD 72/2), ends with the same refrain and rhyme in "‘imâret olayidi"; the fact that the two couplets stand very close together in the divan suggests that they belong to the same ghazal, but this is an inference the source does not state. The source does not give the metre; since the poet used no pen name (mahlas), his ghazals have no signature couplet either. The poet's divan, its editions and his other poems are discussed in Kadı Burhaneddin: Literary Persona, Divan and Poems.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first word of the couplet, "dün", means night in Old Anatolian Turkish; Özkan too understands the line as "had his image come to my heart in the night". In divan poetry the beloved's image is usually a guest that visits the sleepless lover's heart at night. Kadı Burhaneddin likens this visit to a raid: should the image come, the lover's soul would be plundered like a city struck by raiders. The comparison is an open simile built with the particle "gibi" (like); what is compared is the lover's soul, and what it is compared to is plundered Amasya.

The real subtlety of the couplet lies in the lover wishing for this plunder. The pattern "gelseyidi ... olayidi" joins a condition to a wish; the poet speaks of the beloved's image laying waste his heart as a longed-for favour. That even harm coming from the beloved is precious to the lover is a familiar idea of divan poetry. That a ruler should name a rival city as his example of plunder, however, lends the couplet a harsh colour that comes from outside the usual world of the ghazal; this assessment is our own.

Historical Context

According to Özkan, Kadı Burhaneddin mentions Amasya in four separate places in his divan because he contended so much with Hacı Şadgeldi, lord of Amasya, and his son Ahmed Bey. At a time when Sivas was under siege, Ahmed, emir of Amasya, seized some castles belonging to Kadı Burhaneddin, and when the siege was lifted these castles were taken back; Özkan reads the couplet as the echo of these events in poetry and describes Amasya in the divan as "the place that is plundered, the place that is laid waste". Özkan does not say which siege is meant. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Sivas was besieged for forty days by Mamluk forces in 1388, while Kadı Burhaneddin defeated Hacı Şadgeldi and had him killed in the autumn of 1381, routed the emir of Amasya repeatedly in 1384, and in 1394 marched against Ahmed Bey, who had attacked his lands, and laid waste the whole region. The image of plunder in the couplet thus rests on a known outcome of this long rivalry; the year in which the ghazal was written, however, is not known.

Bibliography

Online sources