Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Fe‘ūlün

Seḫā vü cūd kānı Mīr Yaḥyā
K’odur destūr-ı maḳbūl-i şehen-şāh
Seḫāsı şöyledür kim Ḥātem-i Ṭayy
Kerem rāhında olmaz aña hem-rāh
Ḳılup Şeh Muṣṭafā ḫᵛānī żiyāfet
Cihānda ḳıldı ‘arż-ı ḥaşmet ü cāh
Ṭaşān ṭaġında bir cem‘iyyet itdi
K’anuñ vaṣfını söyler cümle efvāh
Ḳılup luṭf ile bir ḥālī velīme
Ṭoyurdı ḫāṣ u ‘āmı gāh u bī-gāh
Gedā vü bāy elvān-ı ni‘āmdan
Naṣībin aldılar bir veche dil-ḫvāh
Görüp Fażlī didi tārīḫin anuñ
Zihī a‘ṭā vü ni‘met bārek-Allah (sene 958)

In English

1. Mîr Yahyâ, mine of generosity and bounty, is the favoured vizier of the king of kings.

2. His generosity is such that Hâtem of Tayy cannot keep him company on the road of bounty. (Hâtem of Tayy is an Arab famed for his generosity.)

3. Spreading a banquet table for King Mustafa, he displayed his splendour and standing to the world.

4. On Mount Taşan he held such a gathering that every mouth tells of it.

5. Graciously he gave a feast and fed the high and the low at all hours.

6. Poor and rich alike took their share of the many kinds of bounty to their hearts' content.

7. Seeing this, Fazlî spoke its chronogram: "What fine gifts and bounty, God bless it" (958).

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a chronogram (tarih manzumesi) of seven couplets (beyit). A chronogram is a poem that places the year of an event within a line by means of the ebced system, which adds up the numerical values of the letters. Here the last line, "Zihī a‘ṭā vü ni‘met bārek-Allah", is the chronogram line; according to Mustafa Özkat it gives the year 958 (1551) and, like all the chronogram lines of the divan, is arranged by the "târih-i tam" method, that is, by counting all the letters of the line. The metre is the "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün" pattern of the hezec family; the rhyme is the sound "-āh": şehen-şāh, hem-rāh, cāh, efvāh, bī-gāh, dil-ḫvāh, bārek-Allah. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet.

Özkat publishes the poem as the fourth chronogram of the divan from the Fazlî divan section (fol. 228b) of a miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library; according to Özkat, the chronograms of the divan exist only in this manuscript. The word "ḫᵛānī" (table) in the third couplet is written "ḫānī" in the manuscript. In the edition the Arabic-script form of the chronogram line is also given under the last couplet.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The poem is a plain chronogram announcing a banquet. The first two couplets praise Mîr Yahyâ, who gave the banquet: he is "seḫā vü cūd kānı", a mine of generosity and bounty, and on the road of generosity even Hâtem of Tayy cannot keep him company. The third and fourth couplets relate the event, and the fifth and sixth describe the abundance of the feast. The word "velīme" originally means a wedding meal and is used here in the sense of a large feast. "Ḫāṣ u ‘ām" (the elite and the common people) in the fifth couplet and "gedā vü bāy" (poor and rich) in the sixth are contrasting pairs which say that everyone took part in the banquet; "gāh u bī-gāh", at all hours, tells that the hospitality went on all day.

The chronogram line combines praise with prayer: "Zihī a‘ṭā vü ni‘met" praises the banquet, while "bārek-Allah" is a formula of prayer meaning "God bless it". Thus the end of the poem carries both the year of the event and the poet's thanks to the host.

Historical Context

According to Özkat, the poem was written on a banquet given in 958 (1551) by a man named Mîr Yahyâ on Mount Taşan in honour of Şehzade Mustafa. In the first couplet Mîr Yahyâ is called "destūr-ı maḳbūl-i şehen-şāh", the favoured vizier of the king of kings; the word "destur" means vizier. Since Şehzade Mustafa is called "şehen-şāh" in Fazlî's chronograms, Mîr Yahyâ appears to have been one of the prince's viziers. Özkat gives no further information about him, and no mention of Mîr Yahyâ has been found in any other source in the course of this study. The location of Mount Taşan is not specified in the edition either.

In 958 Şehzade Mustafa was sanjak governor of Amasya and Fazlî was his divan secretary. The poem records one of the banquets given to the prince by the statesmen around him and is, among Fazlî's chronograms, one of the texts that opens most directly onto the everyday life of the prince's court. In the same years Fazlî also composed chronograms for the appointment of a teacher for the prince's son (957), for a man named Behrâm becoming sword-bearer (957) and for the death of Mahmud, son of the vizier Sun'ullah Beg (955).

Bibliography

Online sources