Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Ezelde Ĥaķ ne yazmış ise bolur,
Göz neni ki görecek ise görür,
İki ‘âlemde Ĥaķķa sıġınmışuz,
Toĥtamış ne ola yâ Aħsaħ Temür.

In English

1. Whatever God wrote in pre-eternity will come to pass; whatever the eye is to see, it will see.

2. In both worlds we have taken refuge in God; so who are Toktamış or Timur the Lame.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a tuyugh (tuyuğ) of four lines, of which the first, second and fourth rhyme. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-ur/-ür" at the end of the words "bolur", "görür" and "Temür"; the third line stays free with "sıġınmışuz". The text is taken from Nevzat Özkan's article with the reference KBD 586/2-3. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi gives pages 586-608 of the divan as the tuyugh section; this tuyugh is on the first page of that section. The form "bolur" in the first line is one of the North-eastern Turkic forms that Ali Alparslan points out in some of the tuyughs; the form expected in Anatolia would be "olur". 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 tuyugh opens by voicing the belief in fate in two plain judgements. The words "whatever God wrote in pre-eternity" rest on the idea that what befalls a man was written before the beginning of time; the second line carries the same idea over to the things the eye will see. These two lines are a typical example of the wisdom manner that, according to the TDV, dominated the old tuyugh. In the third line the poet says that in both worlds he has taken refuge in God alone, and in the fourth he diminishes the two great rulers of his age beside this refuge.

In Özkan's view the poet's stance here is that of a warrior who has surrendered himself to fate. The construction of the last line closely resembles the last line of the tuyugh that names Amasya and Niksar: there it is "N‘olısar Amâsiya ya Niksâr", here "Toĥtamış ne ola yâ Aħsaħ Temür". Both tuyughs begin with a general judgement and end with a question pattern that sets two names side by side with the conjunction "ya" (or) and so makes light of them; this resemblance is our own observation. "Aħsaħ Temür" is Timur's name in the form Aksak Timur, Timur the Lame.

Historical Context

According to the section on the Kadı Burhaneddin state in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Timur, who took Tikrit in October 1393, wrote to Kadı Burhaneddin and the other lords of Anatolia demanding their submission; Kadı Burhaneddin rejected the offer and sent copies of the letter to the Mamluk sultan Barquq and to Bayezid I. Timur came as far as Erzurum at the beginning of 1394 and then turned back, and in a letter to Bayezid he announced that he would punish Kadı Burhaneddin. The article writes that Kadı Burhaneddin's disregard for these threats can be seen from a poem on page 586 of the divan; the tuyugh Özkan quotes from the same page must be that poem. According to the same article, Toktamış, khan of the Golden Horde, was for a time part of the alliance formed against Timur together with Bayezid, Barquq and Kadı Burhaneddin; Özkan, by contrast, names Toktamış as a threat coming from the north. Since the date of the tuyugh is not known, it is not certain what situation the naming of the two together points to.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Online sources