Original Text (Mixed Languages)

Metre: Mef‘ūlü Fā‘ilātü Mefā‘īlü Fā‘ilün

يا من له يسبّح ما في السّماء اما
في الارض بالتّضرّع في الصبح والمسا
وصفش منزّه است ز اطلاق اين و آن
ذاتش مقدّس است ز ظنّ شما وما
آن اولي كه اوّليش گشت چون الف
بر اولي كه هيچ بدو نيست ابتدا
آن آخري كه آخريش بي نهايت است
هم عين ابتدا شده هم عين انتها
آن ظاهري كه عين دو عالم منير شد
شمسش چو خيمه زد ز سرا پردهٔ عما
آن باطني كه كنز خفيّش مقدّس است
از اسم و رسم و وصف و نعوت من شما
فضلي چه گونه دم زند از حمد كبرياش
في ذاته يهيم اولو العقل وانّهي

Reading in Latin script: 1. Yā men lehū yüsebbiḥu mā fi’s-semā’i mā / Fi’l-arżı bi’t-tażarru‘i fi’ṣ-ṣubḥi ve’l-mesā
2. Vaṣfeş münezzeh est zi-iṭlāḳ-ı īn ü ān / Ẕāteş muḳaddes est zi-ẓann-ı şümā vü mā
3. Ān evvelī ki evveliyyeş geşt çün elif / Ber evvelī ki hīç bedū nīst ibtidā
4. Ān āḫirī ki āḫiriyyeş bī-nihāyet est / Hem ‘ayn-ı ibtidā şode hem ‘ayn-ı intihā
5. Ān ẓāhirī ki ‘ayn-ı dü ‘ālem münīr şod / Şemseş çü ḫayme zed zi-serā-perde-i ‘amā
6. Ān bāṭınī ki kenz-i ḫafiyyeş muḳaddes est / Ez ism ü resm ü vaṣf u nu‘ūt-ı men ü şümā
7. Fażlī çe-gūne dem zened ez ḥamd-i kibriyāş / Fī ẕātihī yehīmu ülü’l-‘aḳli ve’n-nühā

In English

1. O You whom all that is in the heavens and on the earth glorifies with supplication, morning and evening. (Özkat's translation in the footnote: "Morning and evening, everyone on earth and in the heavens remembers you with supplication.")

2. His attributes are far above every name and praise bestowed on this one or that; His essence is holier than what you and we suppose.

3. He is a First whose firstness is like the letter elif; a First who has no beginning at all. (Elif is the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and no letter comes before it.)

4. He is a Last whose lastness has no end; He has become the very essence of the beginning and the very essence of the end. (Özkat: "He is the source of both the beginning and the end.")

5. He is a Manifest One: when His sun pitched its tent and came forth from behind the curtain of the pavilion of hiddenness, the eyes of the two worlds were lit up. (Özkat translates the word "‘amā" as "blindness": "when it appeared from the window of the palace of blindness".)

6. He is a Hidden One whose concealed treasure is free of every name, sign, attribute and praise that I or you could ascribe to it.

7. How could Fazlî presume to speak of praising His grandeur; the people of reason, when they contemplate His essence, lose themselves and wander bewildered.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of seven couplets (beyit), written in the "mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün" pattern of the muzâri metre of aruz (quantitative metre). Özkat counts it among Fazlî's three mülemma ghazals and, distinguishing it from the other two, notes that it is written only in Arabic and Persian, that is, in two languages. A mülemma is a poem in which lines composed in different languages are brought together. Here the first couplet and the last line are in Arabic, and the remaining eleven lines are in Persian; the ghazal contains no Turkish line. It has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is built on the long "-ā" sound of the words "mesā, mā, ibtidā, intihā, ‘amā, şümā, nühā", and Özkat counts the ghazal among those with full rhyme. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet.

The ghazal is found in the Fazlî section of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library (fol. 216b), and in Özkat's edition it is the first of the ghazals rhyming in the letter elif. The edition gives this poem in Arabic script and does not show its reading; it supplies the Turkish meanings of the Arabic and Persian lines separately in the footnotes. The original text above is Özkat's Arabic-script text. The reading in Latin script beneath it is ours; the English rendering is based on the meanings in Özkat's footnotes, and the places where we depart from them are indicated in parentheses.

Two points in the reading require comment. The word at the end of the first line is printed in the edition as "اما". Sense and metre call here for the word "mā" (whatever there is); that the elif belongs to the hamza at the end of the word "semā’", and that the line is to be read "fi’s-semā’i mā / fi’l-arżı" (whatever is in the heavens and on the earth), is our interpretation. The second line of the third couplet begins in the edition with "بر اولي". We have read it as printed, "ber evvelī"; in terms of meaning the reading "bī-evvelī" (without beginning) also comes to mind, but we have not altered the text.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

From beginning to end the ghazal is a tevhid, that is, a poem describing the unity and attributes of God. Divan poets usually open their collections with such a poem. That this ghazal opens the ghazal section of the collection, however, is the result of Özkat's arrangement of the poems by their rhyme letters; the edition does not make clear whether it also stood first among Fazlî's ghazals in the miscellany.

The framework of the poem rests on four attributes. The third couplet begins "ān evvelī" (He who is the First), the fourth "ān āḫirī" (He who is the Last), the fifth "ān ẓāhirī" (He who is the Manifest), the sixth "ān bāṭınī" (He who is the Hidden). That these four words treat in turn the names "el-evvel, el-āḫir, eẓ-ẓāhir, el-bāṭın", which occur together in the third verse of the sura al-Hadîd in the Qur'an, is our observation. The repetition of the same opening over four couplets gives the poem the rhythm of a prayer.

The images too are chosen to suit these attributes. In the couplet on the First, the letter elif is used: elif is both the first letter of the alphabet and, with its upright form made of a single stroke, an expression of oneness. In the couplet on the Last, beginning and end are said to meet in the same source; there is antithesis between the words "ibtidā" and "intihā". In the couplet on the Manifest, God's self-disclosure is likened to a sun; this sun comes out of a curtained pavilion, pitches its tent and lights up the two worlds. There is congruence of images (tenasüp) between "ḫayme" (tent) and "serā-perde" (pavilion curtain). The phrase "kenz-i ḫafī" (concealed treasure) in the couplet on the Hidden recalls the report "küntü kenzen maḫfiyyen", meaning "I was a hidden treasure"; this allusion is our observation. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi notes that this saying is one of the best known of the reports cited as hadîs-i kudsî and widely used among the Sufis, while its authenticity is disputed from the standpoint of the science of hadith.

Özkat translates the word "‘amā" at the end of the fifth couplet as "blindness". In the dictionary the word describes a person who has lost the ability to see and, figuratively, one who cannot see the truth. In the couplet, read together with the sun's emergence from behind a curtain invisible to the eye, it can also be understood as a word describing the passage from hiddenness to visibility; this second meaning is our interpretation.

The last couplet is a familiar closing of tevhid poems: the poet says that his tongue cannot suffice to praise God's grandeur. The question in the Persian line is completed by the answer in the Arabic line: even the people of reason are bewildered when they contemplate His essence. The meeting of two languages in the same couplet of the mülemma thus becomes a sharing out of meaning. Özkat notes that with these ghazals Fazlî also displays his command of Arabic and Persian alongside Turkish.

Bibliography

Academic studies

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