Original Ottoman Turkish Text

İlâhî bikr-i fikri feyż-i ḫâṣ it
Çü Yûsuf-ṭabʿ çâhından ḫalâṣ it
Nesîm-i ṣubḥ-ı saʿd idüp be-şîrîn
Uyar ḫˇâb-ı aʿmâdan ʿaḳl-ı pîrîn
Kerem pîrâheninden bû virüp ḫûb
Dil-i maḥzûnı şâd it hemçû Yaʿḳûb
Züleyḫâ-veş ḳoma ki nefs-i reyyân
İde cân-ı ʿazîzi ḥabs-i zındân
Meh-i Kenʿân gibi luṭfuñla her gâh
Yakınuñ nûrın it dil mıṣrına şâh

In English

1. O God, grant Your special grace to the untouched thought of my mind; deliver it, like Joseph, from the well of nature.

2. Making the breeze of the blessed morning blow sweetly, wake my aged reason from the sleep of blindness.

3. Sending a sweet scent from the shirt of Your generosity, gladden the sorrowful heart as You gladdened Jacob.

4. Let not the insatiable self, like Zuleikha, cast the precious soul into prison.

5. Like the moon of Canaan (Joseph), by Your grace make the light of certainty (yakîn) sultan at every moment over the Egypt of the heart.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

These five couplets are taken from the supplication (münacat), the section of prayer to God, at the beginning of Kâmî's lost mesnevi Yûsuf u Züleyhâ. Latîfî introduces them as "ol kitâbuñ ibtidâsından ve iftitâḥından", from the beginning and opening of that book. The two lines of each couplet rhyme with each other: "ḫâṣ it / ḫalâṣ it", "be-şîrîn / pîrîn", "ḫûb / Yaʿḳûb", "reyyân / zındân", "her gâh / şâh". Âşık Çelebi gives the same five couplets with small differences. In his text "beşîrîn" is read for "be-şîrîn", "ʿamâdan" for "aʿmâdan", "ʿaḳl-ı reyyân" for "nefs-i reyyân" and "Yaḳînüñ" for "Yakınuñ". We have rendered the word in the last couplet in the sense of "yakîn" (certainty), following Âşık Çelebi's reading. The editions of the tezkires do not indicate the metre.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Each couplet of the supplication expresses a wish of the poet for himself through an allusion (telmih) to a scene of the Joseph story, and these scenes follow the order of the story. The first couplet recalls Joseph being thrown into the well by his brothers: the poet asks that his "bikr-i fikr", a thought no one has expressed before, be drawn like Joseph out of the "well of nature". Nature here means both the poet's innate disposition and the human side that confines him. The second and third couplets turn to Jacob. When Joseph's shirt was brought to Canaan its scent reached Jacob, and his eyes, blinded by weeping, were opened. The poet likewise wishes that the morning breeze wake his "aged reason" from the sleep of blindness, and that a scent from the shirt of God's generosity gladden the sorrowful heart as it gladdened Jacob. Âşık Çelebi's reading "beşîrîn" makes the scene still clearer: the "beşîr" is the herald who carried the shirt to Jacob, and the breeze has been put in the place of this herald.

The fourth couplet recalls Zuleikha having Joseph thrown into prison. Here Zuleikha stands for the self (nefs) and Joseph for the soul. There is a double entendre (tevriye) in "cân-ı ʿazîz" (the precious soul): "ʿazîz" means precious, and also calls to mind the Aziz of Egypt to whom Joseph was sold and the title Joseph himself later bore. The word "reyyân" means quenched with water, fresh. In Latîfî it is attached to the self, in Âşık Çelebi to reason, and it is not clear which reading is original. The last couplet recalls Joseph becoming ruler of Egypt. The poet likens the heart to the land of Egypt and asks that, like Joseph "the moon of Canaan", the light of certainty ascend the throne in this land. This sequence from the well to the throne, in keeping with the mystical interpretation of the story, also describes a journey in which the soul is freed from the self and attains certainty.

Historical Context

Latîfî says that Kâmî's Yûsuf u Züleyhâ was a translation from Jâmî, that the poet also drew on predecessors such as Hamdî and Selâmî, but that in the mesnevi the art and imagination reached the limit the human mind can attain. Âşık Çelebi and Kınalızâde, on the other hand, write that the work was lost after the poet's death. This supplication is one of the longest fragments to have survived from the work. According to Âşık Çelebi the poet was Mehmed Çelebi, nephew of Şeyh Cemâl, who died in 952 (1545-46). Whether he is the same person as the Kâmî mentioned by Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar in Prince Ahmed's Amasya circle is disputed. The details are in the article Kâmî (Prince Ahmed's Circle).

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources