Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Gözlerüŋ Baġdâd ili ‘ayyârıdur,
Leblerüŋ Rum ilinüŋ ĥammârıdur.
‘İşvelerüŋile kimüŋ sözi var,
Her şîveŋ bu dünyânuŋ mi’mârıdur.

In English

1. Your eyes are the ayyar (pickpocket, trickster) of the land of Baghdad, your lips the wine-seller of the land of Rum (Anatolia).

2. Who can say a word against your coquetries; every grace of yours is the architect of this world.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a tuyugh (tuyuğ) of four lines. The first, second and fourth lines rhyme in the words "‘ayyârıdur", "ĥammârıdur" and "mi’mârıdur"; the rhyme is the sound "-ârı" and the redif (refrain) is the copula "-dur". The third line stays free with "sözi var". The text is taken from Nevzat Özkan's article with the reference KBD 602/6-7 and comes from the tuyugh section of the divan. In Özkan's text the word "Rum" in the second line, unlike the spelling "Rûm" in his other quotations, is without the circumflex; it has been left here as in the source. 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 describes the features of the beloved's beauty through the fame of two lands. As Özkan explains, Baghdad is a crowded city, known as a place where many idle vagabonds also live; the beloved's eyes are therefore the "ayyar" of the land of Baghdad, its pickpocket and trickster, and dangerous in this respect. Anatolia is famous for its wines because of the grapes it grows; the beloved's lips are the "ĥammâr", the wine-seller, of the land of Rum and offer sweet things. Drawing on Ömer Demirbağ, Özkan also interprets the lips being counted as Anatolia's wine-seller as meaning that Anatolia lies within the sphere of influence of the beloved's lips.

According to Özkan, it is also possible to understand the description "ayyar" applied to the eyes, through a remote double entendre (tevriye), as "your eyes are of the standard (ayar) of the land of Baghdad"; the equating of the beloved's eyes with Baghdad, one of the brilliant cities of the age, shows the place Baghdad held in the poet's world of imagination. In the first line eye is paired with Baghdad, in the second lip with Rum; the two lines repeat each other in the same construction. In the third and fourth lines the closeness in sound between the words "işve" and "şîve" is striking; both mean coquetry and grace, and they carry the last word of the tuyugh: every grace of the beloved is an architect that builds this world. This pairing and the relation in sound are our own observations.

Bibliography

Online sources