Original Persian Text

Metre: Mefā‘īlün Mefā‘īlün Fe‘ūlün

چو صنع‌الله را فرزند محمود
شد از دار فنا رحلت مقرّر
نوشته بر مزارش صنع تاریخ
(سنه ٩٥٥) ز فرّ نور حق بادا منوّر

Reading: Çü Ṣun‘ullāh-rā ferzend-i Maḥmūd / Şod ez dār-ı fenā riḥlet muḳarrer // Nüvişte ber mezāreş ṣun‘ tārīḫ / Zi ferr-i nūr-ı Ḥaḳ bādā münevver (sene 955). The edition gives only the Arabic-script text and a Turkish rendering of its meaning; the reading in Latin letters is our own.

In English

1. When the departure from this transient world of Sun'ullah's praiseworthy son (or: his son named Mahmud) was decreed,

2. Divine power wrote this date upon his tomb: "May it be illumined by the splendour of the light of God" (955). (In Özkat's rendering: "May his grave be illumined by the bright and shining light of God.")

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a chronogram (tarih manzumesi) in Persian of two couplets (beyit); it is the only chronogram in Fazlî's divan written in Persian. The metre is the "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün" pattern of the hezec family. The rhyme is the sound "-er" in the words "muḳarrer" and "münevver"; Mustafa Özkat counts this chronogram among those with half rhyme. The last line, "Zi ferr-i nūr-ı Ḥaḳ bādā münevver", gives the year of death by the ebced system. Özkat writes that all the chronogram lines of the divan are arranged by the "târih-i tam" method, that is, by counting all the letters of the line; we have verified by counting that the letters of this line add up to 955. The poem has no pen name (mahlas).

Özkat publishes the poem as the eighth chronogram of the divan from the Fazlî divan section (fol. 229b) of a miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. In the edition the text is given only in Arabic script; Özkat explains the meaning of the two couplets in Turkish in his footnotes but does not give their reading. The original text has been copied letter by letter from the printed page of the edition. The reading in Latin letters and the explanations based on individual words of the couplets are our own; the meaning has been compared with Özkat's footnotes. Özkat repeats the same text, with its meaning, in the section where he discusses Fazlî's Arabic and Persian expressions.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In the first couplet the word "Maḥmūd" can be understood in two ways: it means "praised, praiseworthy" and it is also the name of the young man who died. Özkat too gives both senses together in his footnote: "Sun‘ullāh's praiseworthy (or Maḥmūd-named) son." The word chosen for departure, "riḥlet", presents death as a journey; the phrase "dār-ı fenā" (the abode of transience) recalls the impermanence of the world.

The word "ṣun‘" in the second couplet, meaning "making, creating, art", points to divine power: it is God's creative power that writes the date on the gravestone. The same word is also the first part of the father's name (Ṣun‘ullāh, "the making of God"); that the dead son and the father's name are thus brought together in one couplet is our own observation. The expression reads like a Persian counterpart of the line "Seng-i mezārı üzre tārīḫ yazdı ḳudret" in the seventh chronogram, written for the same young man. The word "ferr" in the date line means splendour and majesty; the wish that the grave be lit by the light of God repeats the prayers "Yirin nūr eylesün" and "Ḥaḳ ideli münevver" in the Turkish chronograms Fazlî wrote for the same death.

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 the viziers of Şehzade Mustafa. Fazlî also wrote two Turkish chronograms and a nine-stanza müseddes elegy for the same young man, and presented a kaside (qasida) to his father Sun'ullah. In these years Şehzade Mustafa was sanjak governor of Amasya and Fazlî was his divan secretary. That three separate chronograms, in Turkish and in Persian, were composed for one death suggests that the poet wished to show both his closeness to the vizier's family and his skill in Persian; this is our own interpretation. Özkat states that he could find no information on Sun'ullah's life.

Bibliography

  • Mustafa Özkat, Kara Fazlî'nin Hayatı, Eserleri, Edebî Kişiliği ve Dîvânı (İnceleme-Tenkitli Metin), MA thesis, Marmara University Institute of Turkic Studies, Istanbul 2005, p. 281, chronogram no. 8 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 229b); also p. 56 (the Sun'ullah kaside), pp. 59-60 (on the chronograms), p. 68 (rhyme) and pp. 110-111 (Persian expressions), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.
  • Hasan Aksoy, "Kara Fazlî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 24, Istanbul 2001, pp. 360-361, https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/kara-fazli.

Online sources