Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ūlü Fā‘ilātün Mef‘ūlü Fā‘ilātün / Müstef‘ilün Fe‘ūlün Müstef‘ilün Fe‘ūlün

Ol mīr-i muḥterem kim Ṣun‘ullah oldı nāmı
Virmişdi Ḥaḳ aña bir Maḥmūd nām mevlūd
Dār-ı fenādan itdi Ḥaḳ emri ile rıḥlet
Olmaġa raḥmet ile dār-ı beḳāda su‘ūd
Seng-i mezārı üzre tārīḫ yazdı ḳudret
Ḥaḳ ideli münevver budur Maḳām-ı Maḥmūd (sene 955)

In English

1. To that honoured emir whose name was Sun'ullah, God had given a child named Mahmud.

2. By God's command Mahmud departed from this transient world, to rise with mercy into the abiding world.

3. Divine power wrote this chronogram upon his gravestone: "May God make it full of light; this is Maḳām-ı Maḥmūd" (955). (Maḳām-ı Maḥmūd means "the praised station"; it is the name of the exalted station promised to the Prophet in the Qur'an. Here it also means the place where Mahmud lies.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a short chronogram (tarih manzumesi) of three couplets (beyit). The rhyme is the sound "-ūd": mevlūd, su‘ūd, Maḥmūd. The metre is "mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātün mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātün" of the muzari family; Mustafa Özkat shows that the same lines can also be read as "müstef‘ilün fe‘ūlün müstef‘ilün fe‘ūlün". The last line, "Ḥaḳ ideli münevver budur Maḳām-ı Maḥmūd", gives the year of death by the ebced reckoning; according to Özkat the date is 955, and like all the chronogram lines in the divan it is arranged by the "târih-i tam" method. The poem has no pen name (mahlas).

Özkat publishes the poem as the seventh chronogram of the divan from the Fazlî divan section (fol. 229b) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. In the edition the Arabic-script form of the chronogram line is also given under the last couplet. The other two chronograms written for the same death are on these folios as well.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The whole skill of the poem lies in the phrase "Maḳām-ı Maḥmūd" in the last line. This phrase is the name of the "praised station" promised to the Prophet in the sura al-Isra of the Qur'an, that is, the station of intercession. Since the young man who died was also called Mahmud, the phrase carries two meanings: it denotes both the exalted station promised to those who attain God's mercy and the grave in which Mahmud lies. This is a double entendre (tevriye), and it turns the chronogram line into a prayer and a consolation at the same time. The words "Ḥaḳ ideli münevver" (may God make it full of light) at the beginning of the line are the traditional prayer that a grave be filled with light.

The second couplet sets up an antithesis (tezat) between "dār-ı fenā" (the transient world) and "dār-ı beḳā" (the abiding world); the words "rıḥlet" (departure) and "su‘ūd" (ascent) describe death as a journey and an ascent. In the third couplet it is said that the one who wrote the chronogram was "ḳudret", divine power; the poet thus offers a poetic aetiology (hüsn-i talil) that presents the chronogram as the writing of destiny. The phrase "seng-i mezār" (gravestone) suggests that this chronogram was composed to be inscribed on a gravestone.

Historical Context

According to Özkat, the sixth, seventh and eighth chronograms were written on the death in 955 (1548) of Mahmud, son of Sun'ullah Beg, one of Şehzade Mustafa's viziers. The sixth chronogram ends with the line "Yirin nūr eylesün Allāh Cebbār" (may God the Almighty fill his resting place with light); the eighth is in Persian, and according to the meaning Özkat gives, it too speaks of a chronogram written on the gravestone. Fazlî also wrote a nine-stanza müseddes elegy for the same youth and a kaside for his father Sun'ullah Beg. In these years Şehzade Mustafa was sanjak governor of Amasya and Fazlî was his divan secretary. Where Mahmud was buried, and whether the chronogram was actually inscribed on a gravestone, are not stated in the sources; no record of such an inscription was found in this study.

Bibliography

Online sources