Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Bini çü ķılur Sa’dî aceb olmaya ger ol,
Sîvâsı daħı ħıŧŧa-i Şîrâz idiserdür.

In English

1. Since he (the beloved) makes me a poet like Sa'di, one should not wonder if he turns Sivas too into the land of Shiraz.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is quoted in Nevzat Özkan's article with the reference KBD 261/10 and comes from the ghazal section of the divan. Since its lines do not rhyme, it is not the opening couplet of the ghazal (gazel); whether the word "idiserdür" (will make) at the end of the second line belongs to the refrain cannot be told from a single couplet. As Ergin's edition could not be consulted, the whole ghazal cannot be given, and the source does not give the metre. 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 couplet is built on an allusion to Sa'di of Shiraz, one of the great names of Persian poetry. The beloved has made the poet a master of words like Sa'di; it is therefore no wonder that the beloved should turn Sivas into Shiraz as well. The word "ħıŧŧa" means land or country; "ħıŧŧa-i Şîrâz" means the land of Shiraz. As Özkan notes, drawing on Emine Yeniterzi, Shiraz, a city that produced poets such as Sa'di, Hafiz and Urfi, is in divan poetry the home of poetry and elegance; this fame lies behind Kadı Burhaneddin's naming of Sivas together with Shiraz.

The logic of the couplet is a chain of cause and effect: if the beloved can turn a man into a poet, he can also turn a city into a city of poetry. In this way the poet both praises the beloved and indirectly boasts by bringing his own poetry close to Sa'di's. In divan poetry a poet's praise of his own verse is called fahriye (self-praise); here the self-praise is uttered in the guise of praise for the beloved. This description is our own. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Kadı Burhaneddin was influenced by Persian poets such as Anvari, Hafiz of Shiraz and Omar Khayyam; the appearance of the name Shiraz in the couplet as an object of admiration accords with this.

Historical Context

Sivas is the centre of Kadı Burhaneddin's political life. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, immediately after defeating Hacı Şadgeldi, emir of Amasya, in the autumn of 1381, Kadı Burhaneddin had the Friday sermon read and coins struck in his name and proclaimed himself sultan, and the state he founded lasted in Central Anatolia, with Sivas and Kayseri as its centres, until 1398. Özkan too offers the couplet as an expression of the feelings the poet held for Sivas, the other centre of his political life. The two couplets likening Kayseri to Baghdad and Sivas to Shiraz show that the poet thought of the two centres of his own state together with the famous cities of the Islamic world; the date of the ghazal, however, is not known.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Online sources