Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilātün Fā‘ilün

Pīr olsun ol cüvān kim olmuşam abdāl aña
Derdümi bilmege yiter na‘l-i sīnem dāl aña
Ḫᵛāce-i çeşmüm görüp cismümi ‘uryān acıyup
Ḳanlu yaşumdan giyürdi bir ḳabā-yı āl aña
Būy-ı zülfüñden meger dem urdı gülşende ṣabā
K’oldı sünbüller bu sevdādan perīşān-ḥāl aña
Āġarı altun degerdi Yūsuf’uñ mīzān gibi
Keffine kim ḳorsa dirhem olmasa meyyāl aña
Fażlī rāhuñda elif-veş ṭoġru olduġı içün
Başumuñ üstinde yirüñ var didi iḳbāl aña

In English

1. May that youth whose dervish I have become grow to be a master; the "dal"-shaped horseshoe brand on my breast is enough for him to know my pain.

2. The master of my eye, seeing my naked body, took pity and clothed it in a red robe made of my bloody tears.

3. The east wind, it seems, spoke in the rose garden of the scent of your tresses; the hyacinths fell into disarray because of this passion.

4. Joseph's weight would have fetched gold, as on a scale, had the one who set him in the pan not been inclined towards dirhams. (The couplet is obscure; this reading is tentative.)

5. Because Fazlî is upright as an alif on your path, fortune told him, "you have a place above my head".

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets, written in the "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün" pattern of the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre). The redif (refrain word) is "aña" (to him); Özkat counts this ghazal among those with a Turkish single-word redif. The rhyme is formed by the sound "-āl" in the words "abdāl, dāl, āl, perīşān-ḥāl, meyyāl, iḳbāl". The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is the thirty-seventh in Özkat's edition and is found only in the Fazlî divan section (fol. 248a) of the miscellany in the Hazine collection of the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. It is not known to whom or when it was written.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first couplet is built with words from the language of the dervish orders. The lover is the "abdal" of the young beloved, that is, a dervish devoted to him; there is a contrast between "pīr" (old, master of an order) and "cüvān" (young), and the words "pīr olsun" also read as a blessing. The horseshoe on the breast refers to the brand lovers burned on their breasts; with its curved shape this brand resembles the letter "dāl" (د). In Arabic the word "dāl" also means "indicating, pointing to"; thus the brand becomes both a letter in its shape and a sign that shows the lover's pain. In the second couplet the bloody tears are likened to a red robe put on the naked body.

In the third couplet a cause is invented in the rose garden: the dishevelled look of the hyacinths is ascribed to the passion they fell into when the east wind spoke of the beloved's tresses; this is the figure of fanciful aetiology (hüsn-i talil). "Ṣabā" (east wind), "būy" (scent), "zülf" (tresses) and "sünbül" (hyacinth) form a congruence of images (tenasüp). In the fourth couplet there is an allusion (telmih) to the story of Joseph; the words "mīzān" (scale), "keffe" (pan), "altun" (gold) and "dirhem" form a congruence of weighing, but the syntax of the couplet is obscure and its sense cannot be resolved with certainty. In the last couplet the letter "alif" is the symbol of uprightness; there is a double entendre (tevriye) between the upright shape of the letter and the lover's honesty. Özkat counts this couplet among the examples of the idiom "baş üstünde yeri var" (to have a place above one's head, to be most welcome); fortune carrying the lover above its head also agrees with the upright stance of the alif.

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. 306, ghazal no. 37 (Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Hazine, fol. 248a); also p. 69 (redifs), p. 91 (idioms) and pp. 119-120 (description of the manuscripts), https://katalog.marmara.edu.tr/veriler/yordambt/cokluortam/5E/T0051713.pdf.

Online sources