Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Buldum ṣaçuñda leyletü’l-isrā’ ḫaberlerin
Ṣordum lebüñe mu‘ciz-i ‘Īsā ḫaberlerin
Mecnūn oturdı yıllar ile baḳdı yollara
Bir kimse ṭoġrı virmedi Leylā ḫaberlerin
Bād-ı ṣabāya zülfi peyāmın getür didüm
Güldi getürdi başuma sevdā ḫaberlerin
Dīdāra ḳarşu durabilir misin iy göñül
İşitmedik mi Ṭūr’la Mūsā ḫaberlerin
Kirpiklerinüñ ‘askerini dizdi bir yire
Buyurdı Fażlī cānuma yaġmā ḫaberlerin

In English

1. In your hair I found the tidings of the Night of the Journey (İsrâ); of your lip I asked the tidings of the miracle of Jesus.

2. For years Majnun sat and watched the roads; no one gave him true tidings of Layla.

3. I said to the morning breeze, "Bring word of his tresses"; it laughed and brought upon my head the tidings of black passion (sevda).

4. O heart, can you stand face to face with (the beloved's) countenance; have we not heard the tidings of Sinai and Moses?

5. He drew up the army of his eyelashes in one place; O Fazlî, he proclaimed to my soul the tidings of plunder.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets, written in the "mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün" pattern of the muzâri family of aruz (quantitative metre). The redif (refrain word) is the word "ḫaberlerin" (the tidings of); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with an Arabic word as redif; "ḫaber" is an Arabic word. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-ā" in the words "isrā', ‘Īsā, Leylā, sevdā, Mūsā, yaġmā". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the hundred and thirty-second in Özkat's edition and is found in miscellany no. 412 of the Yapı Kredi Sermet Çifter Research Library (fol. 7a). According to Özkat's description, this miscellany, copied in the seventeenth century, contains one ghazal by Fazlî among poems by such poets as Sâhib, Sun'î, Muhibbî, Fuzûlî, Adlî, Visâlî, Fevrî, Behiştî, Hayretî and İshak Çelebi. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Every couplet of the ghazal is built round a piece of "tidings", and most of these come from the stories of the prophets or from love romances. Özkat cites the opening couplet as an example of the couplets in which Fazlî uses the prophets, together with their miracles, as terms of comparison. In the first line the beloved's hair, through its blackness and length, is likened to the Night of the Journey (İsrâ), the Prophet's night journey; in the second line the lip carries the tidings of the breath of Jesus, which raised the dead. The comparisons of hair to night and of the lip to life-giving breath are established conventions of divan poetry. The second couplet turns to the story of Layla and Majnun: Majnun watches the roads for years, but no one brings him true tidings of Layla.

In the third couplet the morning breeze is, in divan poetry, the messenger who brings tidings of the beloved. The lover asks it for word of the tresses; the breeze laughs and brings upon his head the tidings of "sevdā". The word "sevdā" means both the passion of love and black bile, blackness; the relation between the blackness of the tresses and this sense is our own observation. The fourth couplet recalls how Moses could not endure the divine manifestation on Mount Sinai, and asks the heart whether it can stand face to face with the beloved's countenance. In the last couplet the eyelashes are drawn up like an army and the order is given to plunder the soul; the comparison of eyelashes to arrows and soldiers is common in divan poetry.

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, pp. 363-364, ghazal no. 132 (Yapı Kredi Sermet Çifter Research Library 412, fol. 7a); also p. 69 (redifs), p. 74 (the prophets) and p. 122 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources