Original Ottoman Turkish Text

N’ola eger fetĥ oldıyısa bize Simâlu,
Ki görmemiş ola göz ħûbı işbu sîmâlu.

In English

1. What wonder if Simâlu has been conquered by us; for the eye has never seen a beauty with such a face.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is quoted in Nevzat Özkan's article with the reference KBD 108/9-10; Özkan says plainly that he takes it from a ghazal (gazel). Since both lines end in the same sound, with the words "Simâlu" and "sîmâlu", the couplet may be the opening couplet (matla) of the ghazal; this observation is our own. As Ergin's edition could not be consulted, the whole ghazal cannot be given, and the source does not give the metre. Simâlu is one of the castles named in the divan; the source does not state its present-day location. 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 whole subtlety of the couplet lies in the likeness in sound of two words. "Simâlu" at the end of the first line is the name of a castle; "sîmâlu" at the end of the second means "having a face, fair-faced". The giving of two different meanings with the same sound is called cinas (pun) in divan poetry; here the pun binds news of a conquest to praise of beauty. The poet speaks of the conquest of the castle as an ordinary matter and says that the truly astonishing thing is the beloved's face: the eye has never seen such a face.

Özkan explains the couplet as "the eye had never seen a beauty with this face; what matter if we conquered Simâlu". The line beginning "N'ola" (what wonder, what matter), while seeming to belittle the ruler's victory, in fact weighs it on the same scale as the beloved's beauty. Setting the name of a historical event in the rhyme position and answering it with a word of beauty is one of the clearest examples of Kadı Burhaneddin's way of carrying his political life into the language of the ghazal. At the end of his article Özkan describes Simâlu as the place remembered in the divan as a pleasant castle of vineyards and gardens.

Historical Context

As Özkan relates, drawing on Yaşar Yücel, when Ahmed Bey, emir of Amasya, decided in 1391 to hand over Simâlu, one of the most important castles of the region, to the Ottoman state, Kadı Burhaneddin besieged the castle and secured its surrender; Özkan says that this development was reflected in this way in one of the poet's ghazals. The couplet thus becomes one of the traces in poetry of the continuing struggle with the emirate of Amasya. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, in the same years Kadı Burhaneddin was allied with the Candarids against the Ottomans and in 1392 had defeated Bayezid at Çorumlu; preventing Simâlu from passing to the Ottomans may be understood as part of this rivalry, but this connection is our own inference.

Bibliography

Online sources